The writing system used by the Sumerians. Cuneiform: history, features

The Sumerian cuneiform is part of the small heritage that remains after this ancient civilization. Unfortunately, most of the architectural monuments were lost. There remained only clay tablets with unique inscriptions on which the Sumerians wrote - cuneiform. For a long time, it remained an unsolved mystery, but thanks to the efforts of scientists, humanity now has data on what the Mesopotamian civilization was.

The Sumerians: who they are

Sumerian civilization (literal translation "blackheads") - one of the very first that arose on our planet. The very origin of the people in history is one of the most acute issues: scientists are still arguing. This phenomenon is even given the designation "Sumerian question". The search for archaeological data had little to do with, therefore the main source of study was the field of linguistics. The Sumerians, whose cuneiforms were best preserved, began to be studied from the point of view of the language relationship.

Approximately 5 thousand years BC in the valley of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates in the southern part of Mesopotamia there were settlements that later grew into a mighty civilization. Findings of archaeologists show how well developed in the economic plan were the Sumerians. Cuneiform on numerous clay tablets tells about this.

Excavations in the ancient city of Sumer Uruk make it possible to draw an unambiguous conclusion that the Sumerian cities were sufficiently urbanized: there were classes of artisans, traders, managers. Outside cities lived shepherds and peasants.

Language of the Sumerians

The Sumerian language is a very interesting linguistic phenomenon. Most likely, he came to southern Mesopotamia from India. For 1-2 thousand years the population spoke on it, however soon it was replaced by Akkadian.

The Sumerians still continued to use their native language in cultic activities, it conducted administrative work, was taught in schools. This continued until the beginning of our era. How did the Sumerians write their language on the letter? Cuneiform was used for this purpose.

Unfortunately, the phonetic structure of the Sumerian language could not be restored, because it belongs to the type when the lexical and grammatical meaning of the word consists in numerous affixes joining the root.

Evolution of the cuneiform

The emergence of the cuneiform of the Sumerians coincides with the beginning of economic activity. It is due to the fact that it was necessary to record elements of administrative activity or trade. It should be said that the Sumerian cuneiform is considered the first letter that appeared, which gave a basis to other systems of writing in the Mesopotamia.

Initially, the digital values were fixed, while they were far from writing. A certain amount was designated by special clay figurines - tokens. One token is one item.

With the development of economic management it became inconvenient, therefore on each figure began to make special designations. The tokens were stored in a special container, on which the owner's seal was depicted. Unfortunately, to count the names, we had to break the vault, and then seal it again. For convenience, next to the seal, they began to display information about the contents, and after the physical figures disappeared altogether - there were some impressions left. So the first clay tablets appeared. What was depicted on them was nothing more than pictograms: specific designations of specific figures and objects.

Later, the pictograms began to reflect and abstract symbols. For example, a bird and the egg represented by a number indicated already fertility. Such a letter was already ideographic (signs-symbols).

The next stage is the phonetic design of pictograms and ideograms. It should be said that each sign has to correspond to a certain sound design, not related to the depicted object. Stylistics is also changing, it is simplified (as - we'll explain later). In addition, the symbols unfold for convenience, become horizontally oriented.

The emergence of the cuneiform gave an impetus to the completion of the vocabulary of words, which is very active.

Cuneiform: basic principles

What was a cuneiform letter? Paradoxically, the Sumerians could not read: the principle of writing was not the same. They saw the written text, because the basis was an ideographic letter.

The inscription was influenced in many ways by the material on which the clay was written. Why she? Let's not forget that Mesopotamia is an area where there are practically no trees suitable for processing (let us recall Slavic birchbark letters or Egyptian papyrus made of bamboo stalk), there was no stone there either. But clay in the floods of rivers was abundant, so it was widely used by the Sumerians.

The billet for writing was a clay cake, it had the shape of a circle or a rectangle. Were applied signs of a special stick, called kapam. It was made of a solid material, for example, bone. The tip of the capa was triangular. The process of writing was to dip the wand into soft clay and leave a certain pattern. When the kapama was pulled out of the clay, the elongated part of the triangle left a trail resembling a wedge, so the name is "cuneiform". To save what was written, the plate was burned in the oven.

The origin of syllabary

As it was written above, before the cuneiform writing appeared, the Sumerians had a different type of outline - pictography, then ideography. Later the signs became simplified, for example, instead of the whole bird, only the paw was depicted. Yes, and the number of signs used is gradually shrinking - they become more universal, begin to mean not only direct concepts, but abstract ones - for this it is enough to depict a different ideogram next to it. Thus, the "other country" and "woman" standing side by side meant the concept of "slave". Thus, the meaning of particular signs became clear from the general context. This way of expression is called logography.

Still, it was difficult to portray ideograms on clay, so over time, each of them was replaced by a certain combination of dash-wedges. This pushed the writing process further, allowing the use of matching syllables to certain sounds. Thus, a syllabary began to develop, which lasted long enough.

Decoding and meaning for other languages

The middle of the 19th century was marked by attempts to penetrate into the essence of the Sumerian cuneiforms. Grotefend made great strides in this. However, the inscription found by Behistun made it possible to decipher many texts. The texts carved on the rock contained examples of the ancient Persian, Elamian and Akkadian inscriptions. Rawlins was able to decipher the texts.

The emergence of the cuneiform of the Sumerians influenced the writing of other countries of the Mesopotamia. Propagating, civilization carried with it a verbal and syllabic type of letter that other peoples adopted. The entry of the Sumerian cuneiforms into the Elamite, Hurritic, Hittite and Urartian letters is particularly evident.