Ancient Babylonia - Cuneiform
The script of the Sumerians and all the other inhabitants of Mesopotamia
employed to write their language, up to the first century BC was cuneiform. The name cuneiform comes from the Latin word "cuneus", meaning wedge.
According to Babylonian beliefs Nabu, the god of scribal arts, who was also the city god of Borsippa, gave cuneiform to them.
When the Akkadians, Semite invaders from the desert, adopted the Sumerian civilization and part
of the Sumerian Territory they also adopted cuneiform. They adapted the script
to fit their own. The next wave of Semite invaders, the Amorites, did likewise, but they continued to speak the Akkadian tongue. Thus we find
Hammurapi (1792-1760 BC) who was an Amorite, speaking Akkadian and writing
cuneiform. Since the time of Hammurapi, successive Mesopotamian empires controlled
huge empires in the Near East. Because of this cuneiform, Akkadian became the lingua franca of the Near East, as Latin was of Medieval Europe. This of course ended when Mesopotamian
civilization declined so that cuneiform was no longer being used by about the first
century BC.
When the Sumerians first brought cuneiform into being it was nothing like the
script that it was to become. It was an ideogramatical script (a symbol represented by a word). For example a picture of sheep would mean sheep. When the Sumerians came into
contact with the Akkadians they needed to adapt their script to fit. This was
necessary even to write Akkadian names. Obviously it was far more important for
the Akkadians because they needed to write their language in it. Cuneiform
then underwent a transformation. It became a syllogramatical script where each
symbol represented a sound. Therefore the symbol for a word such as 'dig', if we
took an English equivalent would be correctly used in the second syllable of
'indignant'. This transformation enabled cuneiform to be used with other
languages.
As cuneiform changed from an ideogramatical to a syllogramatical script its symbols were simplified. The original pictograms were complicated and
hard to write on clay tablets. The symbols developed, losing many of their lines
and the remaining lines were wedge shaped and straight.
Cuneiform was originally written with a reed or stick stylus but this was
quickly developed into a precision tool. We have derived virtually all our knowledge of the Babylonians from texts
written in cuneiform on clay tablets. From these tablets we have been able to learn their law, business,
administration, religion and all other aspects of Babylonian civilization. Without these
texts we would know little about the Babylonians.
Ancient Babylonia
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