Early South Indian Palaeography c8.s2.t2: Cuneiform
Early South Indian Palaeography c8.s2.t2
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Cuneiform
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Cuneiform was, so to say, the multi-national script of ancient times unlike the Egyptian systems of writing.¹⁰² The resuscitation of the lost languages of Mesopotamia is a romantic, yet solemn tale. Thanks to the efforts of Grotefund (in 1821), Rawlinson (in 1851) and others we have gained an insight into the genius behind the languages and their cuneiform script, so named, owing to the wedge-like character of the strokes of the writing. Many of the inscriptions so far found have been incised "on soft clay subsequently baked, with a blunt pointed instrument or stylus, probably the three-sided stem of a rush which produced these wedge-like marks."¹⁰³ There are inscriptions on slate, marble, alabaster and other stones too, but, "the wedges which were natural and incident to inscriptions in soft clay were copied in the stone and became the standard forms in the written syllabary however and wherever used."¹⁰⁴ The wedges are separated from one another, well arranged in precise groupings constituted by syllables, the script itself being syllabic. A careful observer will not fail to see the latent pictoriality of the syllabic signs. As Mason writes, "they were but the survivals of an extremely archaic script, linear and pictorial in its character, of which they were the direct lineal descendants."104a The pictographs represented objects, both animate and inanimate. According to Professor Speiser "the property marks, the primitive prototypes of those which appear on the Mesopotamian cylinder seals, were the beginnings of the script out of which the cuneiform system arose".¹⁰⁵ It is well known that in the course of excavations in Mesopotamia the lower strata progressively showed the nature of the script to be essentially pictorial and finally we come across inscriptions in which the wedges have disappeared altogether, "and each sign is drawn in lines—no longer writing as we know it but veritable outline drawing".¹⁰⁶
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¹⁰² "The Egyptian scripts were essentially national.........; they originated in Egypt, they were employed only for Egyptian speech, they developed in Egypt and they died out in Egypt". *Ibid.* p. 63.
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¹⁰³ Mason, *op.cit.*, 232.
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¹⁰⁴ *Ibid.*, p. 233.
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104a Mason, *op.cit.*, p. 233.
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¹⁰⁵ Diringer, *op.cit.*, p. 43.
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¹⁰⁶ Mason, *op.cit.*, p. 235.
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In course of time the pictorial characters must have advanced further and thus arose a second stage in the development of cuneiform, namely that of symbols standing for abstract ideas. "As soon as the need for the representation of continuous discourse arose, it became evident that a number of the vital elements of speech, such as inflexions, pronouns, adverbs, prepositions or personal names, especially of foreigners, could not be represented by this means. Hence, the picture-symbols came to be used to represent not only objects or related abstract ideas, but also the phonetic value of words without any regard to their meaning as pictures. In other words the cuneiform writing became a *rebus-writing*; many symbols were "sound-pictures" or phonograms, symbolizing word-sounds as such, or "phonetic complements".¹⁰⁷
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¹⁰⁷ Diringer, *op.cit.*, p. 43.
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The Father Schiel Tablet,¹⁰⁸ which is one of the oldest, exhibits characters wholly pictographic without any manifestation of convention. They are drawn upright in vertical columns and are to be read downward and from right to left (as indicated) by the numbers at the top of the tablet. The first column is occupied by the proper name ‘Garduengub’ spelt with phonetic and syllabic characters as proper names and cannot be pictured otherwise.¹⁰⁹ Similarly in the ‘Monuments Blau’ the characters have just begun to progress beyond the ideographic stage and there is a combination of written characters and pictorial drawings. In the Hoffman tablet as well as in the collection of Babylonian tablets in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, one character occurs three times, each time drawn differently. And as in the ‘Monuments Blau’ “the characters are not placed above each other nor in vertical registers, but are disposed for the most part horizontally, reading from right to left along the horizontal lines rather than downward.”¹¹⁰
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¹⁰⁸ The inscriptions have been generally named after the discoverers.
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¹⁰⁹ “The characters in Garduengub's name really are pictures, or at least ideographs. The first one appears to be an early form of the symbol for ‘night’ and closely resembles the Chinese, Egyptian and Ojibwa symbols for night. The second character probably represents a covered pot; the third a throne; and the fourth obviously a human foot. The remainder of the inscription is written in characters probably largely ideographic” (Mason, *op.cit.*, p. 239).
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¹¹⁰ *Ibid.*, p. 244.
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The cuneiform symbols had an extensive range of expression; there were polyphones as well as homophones. As the latter had similar phonetic values but represented different objects, clarity in communication had to be provided by determinatives, that is signs placed beside the words to be clarified, and yet not pronounced. The determinatives indicated the meaning of a word by denoting precisely the class to which the object belongs. “In general the same cuneiform sign might stand for a simple syllable or vowel, or it might express a whole idea or word by itself, or yet again it might indicate only the class in which the particular word was being employed”.¹¹¹ However, in the gradual process of simplification the pictures were conventionalized and thus only the bare features necessary for ready identification, happened to be retained; the script too became linear.
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¹¹¹ Diringer, *op.cit.*, p. 43.
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Thus a permanent change came over in the position of the signs and they were drawn on their sides in horizontal rows and as a result the reading was from left to right. The account given here is far too simple and short to bring home the immense vicissitudes and the numerous stages which had to be passed through before any stability could be gained.
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The original signs, as Diringer points out, have not survived, as the people, perhaps, employed perishable materials, such as, wood or a kind of papyrus leaf.¹¹² Early Mesopotamian writing survives on a few clay tablets where the signs already appear quite developed. "About 3200 B.C. some scribes found it convenient to turn the tablet in such a way that the pictographs appear lying on their back while in inscriptions on stone or metal the old position of the signs persisted for a few centuries more".¹¹³ Later the monumental inscriptions also adopted the system of the clay tablets and the signs came to be regularly turned at an angle of 90 degrees. (*Fig*. 10, Col. 2) "The change from the linear script to wedge shaped strokes (*Fig*. 10, Col. 3) was not a device deliberately chosen, but came about more or less by accident" occasioned by the use of the stylus.¹¹⁴ By Hammu-rabi's time, thus, conventionalization had advanced so far that the resemblance of the cuneiform characters, then well established, to be read downward and from right to left (as indicated) by the numbers at the top of the tablet. The first column is occupied by the proper name ‘Garduengub’ spelt with phonetic and syllabic characters as proper names and cannot be pictured otherwise.¹⁰⁹ Similarly in the ‘Monuments Blau’ the characters have just begun to progress beyond the ideographic stage and there is a combination of written characters and pictorial drawings. In the Hoffman tablet as well as in the collection of Babylonian tablets in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, one character occurs three times, each time drawn differently. And as in the ‘Monuments Blau’ “the characters are not placed above each other nor in vertical registers, but are disposed for the most part horizontally, reading from right to left along the horizontal lines rather than downward.”¹¹⁰
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¹¹² Diringer, *op.cit.*, pp. 45-46.
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¹¹³ *Ibid.*, pp. 46-47.
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¹¹⁴ *Ibid.*, p. 48. "The Sumerians found themselves in a country abounding in clay, and in using it as a writing material, they soon discovered that one could draw a character in the wet clay—the written clay-tablets or bricks being exposed to the sun and baked hard, so that the record became durable—much better and more quickly by impressing them than by scratching. On the other hand curves, circles and fine long lines could not be impressed satisfactorily, so that all these lines, curves and circles were replaced by combinations of short, straight, vertical, horizontal or oblique strokes or angles. These were impressed, line by line, with the edge of a broad-headed stylus, consisting of a straight piece of stick of reed, bone, hard wood or metal. Assyrian monuments represent scribes holding the stylus in their closed fist and pressing upon the tablet. Naturally, the strokes impressed were thick on the top and on the left—the direction of writing being then from left to right—thus giving birth to a series of wedge-shaped characters, called by the users 'fingers'; and this peculiarity became more pronounced as time went on. The wedge-constructed characters, once they had been standardized, were cut on stone, metal, glass and other hard material". (*Ibid.*)
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¹⁰⁹ “The characters in Garduengub’s name really are pictures, or at least ideographs. The first one appears to be an early form of the symbol for ‘night’ and closely resembles the Chinese, Egyptian and Ojibwa symbols for night. The second character probably represents a covered pot; the third a throne; and the fourth obviously a human foot. The remainder of the inscription is written in characters probably largely ideographic” (Mason, *op.cit.*, p. 239).
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¹¹⁰ *Ibid.*, p. 244.
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The cuneiform symbols had an extensive range of expression; there were polyphones as well as homophones. As the latter had similar phonetic values but represented different objects, clarity in communication had to be provided by determinatives, that is signs placed beside the words to be clarified, and yet not pronounced. The determinatives indicated the meaning of a word by denoting precisely the class to which the object belongs. “In general the same cuneiform sign might stand for a simple syllable or vowel, or it might express a whole idea or word by itself, or yet again it might indicate only the class in which the particular word was being employed”.¹¹¹ However, in the gradual process of simplification the pictures were conventionalized and thus only the bare features necessary for ready identification, happened to be retained; the script too became linear.
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¹¹¹ Diringer, *op.cit.*, p. 43.
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Thus a permanent change came over in the position of the signs and they were drawn on their sides in horizontal rows and as a result the reading was from left to right. The account given here is far too simple and short to bring home the immense vicissitudes and the numerous stages which had to be passed through before any stability could be gained.
c8.s2.t2.26
The original signs, as Diringer points out, have not survived, as the people, perhaps, employed perishable materials, such as, wood or a kind of papyrus leaf.¹¹² Early Mesopotamian writing survives on a few clay tablets where the signs already appear quite developed. "About 3200 B.C. some scribes found it convenient to turn the tablet in such a way that the pictographs appear lying on their back while in inscriptions on stone or metal the old position of the signs persisted for a few centuries more".¹¹³ Later the monumental inscriptions also adopted the system of the clay tablets and the signs came to be regularly turned at an angle of 90 degrees. (*Fig.* 10, Col. 2) "The change from the linear script to wedge shaped strokes (*Fig.* 10, Col. 3) was not a device deliberately chosen, but came about more or less by accident" occasioned by the use of the stylus.¹¹⁴ By Hammurabi's time, thus, conventionalization had advanced so far that the resemblance of the cuneiform characters, then well established, to their linear prototypes may be discovered only by a practised eye, though the grouping of the cuneiform characters into forms traceable to the original ideographs was still apparent.¹¹⁵
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¹¹² Diringer, *op.cit.*, pp. 45-46.
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¹¹³ *Ibid.*, pp. 46-47.
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¹¹⁴ *Ibid.*, p. 48. "The Sumerians found themselves in a country abounding in clay, and in using it as a writing material, they soon discovered that one could draw a character in the wet clay—the written clay-tablets or bricks being exposed to the sun and baked hard, so that the record became durable—much better and more quickly by impressing them than by scratching. On the other hand curves, circles and fine long lines could not be impressed satisfactorily, so that all these lines, curves and circles were replaced by combinations of short, straight, vertical, horizontal or oblique strokes or angles. These were impressed, line by line, with the edge of a broad-headed *stylus*, consisting of a straight piece of stick of reed, bone, hard wood or metal. Assyrian monuments represent scribes holding the stylus in their closed fist and pressing upon the tablet. Naturally, the strokes impressed were thick on the top and on the left—the direction of writing being then from left to right—thus giving birth to a series of wedge-shaped characters, called by the users 'fingers'; and this peculiarity became more pronounced as time went on. The wedge-constructed characters, once they had been standardized, were cut on stone, metal, glass and other hard material". (*Ibid.*)
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¹¹⁵ Mason, *op.cit.*, p. 263.
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The cuneiform system, when simplified by the Assyrians still totalled about 570 signs, with some 300 of them in frequent use. Later the Assyrian cuneiform virtually became a syllabic script and the Persians, influenced by the Aramaic alphabet reduced it to a quasi-alphabetic system.¹¹⁶ The Medic tribes added four vowel sounds to the twenty consonants recognised by them, and along with some other changes evolved about thirty-six or thirty-seven alphabetic and syllabic signs.¹¹⁷
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¹¹⁶ Diringer, *op.cit.*, p. 48.
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¹¹⁷ The ordinary Persian writing was identical with that of the Medic. A cuneiform alphabet, consisting of some thirty-six or thirty-seven forms, expressive of some twenty-three distinct sounds sufficed for the wants of the people, whose language was simple and devoid of phonetic luxuriance. Writing was from left to right as with the Aryan nations generally. Words were separated from one another by an oblique wedge; and were divided at any point at which the writer happened to reach the end of the line". (George Rawlinson, *The Seven Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World*, quoted in Mason, *op. cit.*, p. 264.)