Type: syllabic-ideographic

Language family: not established

Localization: Northern Mesopotamia

Distribution time: 3300 BC e. - 100 AD e.

Sumer, one of the most ancient 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 in this territory began to appear already in the 6th millennium BC. e.

Where the Sumerians came to these lands from, among whom the local agricultural communities disappeared, has not yet been clarified.

Their own traditions speak of eastern or southeastern origin. They considered their oldest settlement to be Eredu, the southernmost of the cities of Mesopotamia, now the site of Abu Shahrain.

The Sumerians called the homeland of all mankind 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 Nasr, dating back to 3300 BC.

The Sumerian language still continues to remain 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; these included more than 50 ideograms, about 100 signs for simple syllables and 130 for complex ones; there were signs for numbers in the hexadecimal and decimal systems.

Sumerian writing developed over 2,200 years

Most signs have two or several readings (polyphonism), since often, next to Sumerian, they also acquired a Semitic meaning. Sometimes they depicted related concepts (for example, “sun” - bar and “shine” - lah).

The invention of Sumerian writing itself was undoubtedly one of the largest and most significant achievements of the Sumerian civilization. Sumerian writing, which went from hieroglyphic, figurative signs-symbols to the 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 the IV-III millennium BC. e. we have indisputable evidence that the population of Lower Mesopotamia was Sumerian. The widely known story of the Great Flood first appears in 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 records dating back to the 26th century. BC e., there are already examples of folk wisdom genres, 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, later it was forgotten. For tens of centuries, cuneiform kept its secret, until in 1835 the unusually energetic Englishman Henry Rawlinson, an English officer and lover of antiquities, deciphered it. One day he was informed that an inscription had been preserved on a steep cliff in Behistun (near the city of Hamadan in Iran). It turned out to be the same inscription, written in three ancient languages, including ancient Persian. Rawlinson first read the inscription in this language known to him, and then managed to understand the other 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 Sumerian heritage 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 see how over 500 years hieroglyphic images of numerals turned into cuneiform ones.

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Sumerian cuneiform is part of the small heritage that remains after this. Unfortunately, most of the architectural monuments were lost. All that remained were clay tablets with unique writings 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 about what the civilization of Mesopotamia was like.

Sumerians: who are they?

The Sumerian civilization (literal translation “black-headed”) is one of the very first to emerge on our planet. The very origin of a people in history is one of the most pressing issues: disputes among scientists are still ongoing. This phenomenon is even given the name “Sumerian question.” The search for archaeological data yielded little, so the main source of study became the field of linguistics. The Sumerians, whose cuneiform script is best preserved, began to be studied from the point of view of linguistic kinship.

Around 5 thousand years BC, settlements appeared in the valley and Euphrates in the southern part of Mesopotamia, which later grew into a powerful civilization. Archaeological finds indicate how economically developed the Sumerians were. Cuneiform writing on numerous clay tablets tells about this.

Excavations in the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk allow us to make an unambiguous conclusion that the Sumerian cities were quite urbanized: there were classes of artisans, traders, and managers. Outside the cities lived shepherds and peasants.

Sumerian language

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

The Sumerians still continued to use their native language in religious events, administrative work was carried out in it, and they studied in schools. This continued until the beginning of our era. How did the Sumerians write their language? Cuneiform was used precisely for this purpose.

Unfortunately, it was not possible to restore the phonetic structure of the Sumerian language, because it belongs to the type where the lexical and grammatical meaning of a word lies in numerous affixes attached to the root.

Evolution of cuneiform

The emergence of Sumerian cuneiform 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 Sumerian cuneiform is considered the first writing to appear, which provided the basis for other writing systems in Mesopotamia.

Initially, digital values ​​were recorded while they were far from written language. A certain amount was indicated by special clay figurines - tokens. One token - one item.

With the development of economics, this became inconvenient, so they began to make special markings on each figure. Tokens were stored in a special container on which the owner’s seal was depicted. Unfortunately, in order to count the items, the storage had to be broken down and then sealed again. For convenience, information about the contents began to be depicted next to the seal, and after that the physical figures disappeared completely - only the prints remained. This is how the first clay tablets appeared. What was depicted on them was nothing more than pictograms: specific designations of specific numbers and objects.

Later, pictograms began to reflect abstract symbols. For example, a bird and an egg depicted next to it already indicated fertility. Such writing was already ideographic (signs-symbols).

The next stage is the phonetic design of pictograms and ideograms. It should be said that each sign began to correspond to a certain sound design that has nothing to do with the depicted object. The style is also changing, it is being simplified (we’ll tell you how later). In addition, for convenience, the symbols unfold and become horizontally oriented.

The emergence of cuneiform gave impetus to the replenishment of the dictionary of styles, which is happening very actively.

Cuneiform: Basic Principles

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

The style was largely influenced by the material on which they wrote - clay. Why she? Let's not forget that Mesopotamia is an area where there are practically no trees suitable for processing (remember the Slavic ones or the Egyptian papyrus, made from a bamboo stem), and there was no stone there. But there was plenty of clay in the river floods, so it was widely used by the Sumerians.

The writing blank was a clay cake, it had the shape of a circle or a rectangle. The marks were made with a special stick called a kapama. It was made of hard material, such as bone. The tip of the kapama was triangular. The writing process involved dipping a stick into soft clay and leaving a specific design. When the kapama was pulled out of the clay, the elongated part of the triangle left a wedge-like mark, hence the name “cuneiform”. To preserve what was written, the tablet was fired in a kiln.

The origins of syllabics

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

Still, it was difficult to depict ideograms on clay, so over time, each of them was replaced by a certain combination of dashes-wedges. This pushed the writing process forward by allowing syllables to match specific sounds. Thus, syllabic writing began to develop, which lasted for quite a long time.

Decoding and meaning for other languages

The mid-19th century was marked by attempts to understand the essence of the Sumerian cuneiform writing. Grotefend made great strides in this. However, what was found made it possible to finally decipher many texts. The rock-cut texts contained examples of ancient Persian, Elamite and Akkadian script. Rawlins was able to decipher the texts.

The emergence of Sumerian cuneiform influenced the writing of other countries of Mesopotamia. As civilization spread, it brought with it the verbal-syllabic type of writing, which was adopted by other peoples. The entry of Sumerian cuneiform into Elamite, Hurrian, Hittite and Urartian writing is especially clear.

Instructions

During excavations of the city of Uruk, clay tablets were found around 3300 BC. This allowed scientists to conclude that writing contributed to the rapid development of cities and complete societies. There was the kingdom of Elam, and between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was the Sumerian kingdom. These two states conducted trade, and therefore there was an urgent need for writing. Elam used pictographs, which the Sumerians adapted.

In Elam and Sumer, tokens were used - clay chips of various shapes that denoted single objects (one goat or one ram). Somewhat later, symbols began to be applied to tokens: serifs, imprints, triangles, circles and other shapes. Tokens were placed in containers with . To find out about the contents, it was necessary to break the container, count the number of chips and determine their shape. Subsequently, the container itself began to indicate what tokens it contained. Soon these chips lost their purpose. The Sumerians were content with only their imprint on the container, which turned from a ball into a flat tablet. Using corners and circles on such plates, the type and quantity of items or objects were indicated. By definition, all signs were pictograms.

Over time, the combinations of pictograms became stable. Their meaning was made up of a combination of images. If the sign was drawn with an egg, then it was about fertility and procreation as an abstract concept. Pictograms became ideograms (symbolic representations of an idea).

After 2-3 centuries, the style of Sumerian writing changed dramatically. To make it easier to read, the symbols were divided into wedges - small segments. In addition, all symbols used began to be depicted inverted 90 degrees counterclockwise.

The styles of many words and concepts are standardized over time. Now you can put not only administrative letters on the tablets, but also literary treatises. In II BC, Sumerian cuneiform was already used in the Middle East.

The first attempt to decipher Sumerian writing was made by Grotefend in the mid-19th century. His work was later continued by Rawlinson. The subject of his study was the Behistun manuscript. The scientist found that the tablets that came into his hands were written in three languages ​​and represented the Elamite and Akkadian scripts - direct descendants of the Sumerian script. By the end of the 19th century, later forms of cuneiform were finally deciphered thanks to dictionaries and archives found in Nineveh and Babylon. Today, scientists are trying to understand the principle of proto-Sumerian writing - the prototypes of the cuneiform writing of the Sumerians.

Type: syllabic-ideographic

Language family: not installed

Localization: Northern Mesopotamia

Propagation time:3300 BC e. - 100 AD e.

The Sumerians called the homeland of all mankind the island of Dilmui, identified with modern Bahrain in the Persian Gulf.

The earliest is represented by texts found in the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, dated 3300 BC.

The Sumerian language still continues to remain 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; these included more than 50 ideograms, about 100 signs for simple syllables and 130 for complex ones; there were signs for numbers in the hexadecimal and decimal systems.

Sumerian writing developed over 2200 years

Most signs have two or several readings (polyphonism), since often, next to Sumerian, they also acquired a Semitic meaning. Sometimes they depicted related concepts (for example, “sun” - bar and “shine” - lah).

The invention of Sumerian writing itself was undoubtedly one of the largest and most significant achievements of the Sumerian civilization. Sumerian writing, which went from hieroglyphic, figurative signs-symbols to the 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 the IV-III millennium BC. e. we have indisputable evidence that the population of Lower Mesopotamia was Sumerian. The widely known story of the Great Flood first appears in 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 records dating back to the 26th century. BC e., there are already examples of folk wisdom genres, cult texts and hymns.

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, later it was forgotten. For tens of centuries, cuneiform kept its secret, until in 1835 the unusually energetic Englishman Henry Rawlinson, an English officer and lover of antiquities, deciphered it. One day he was informed that an inscription had been preserved on a steep cliff in Behistun (near the city of Hamadan in Iran). It turned out to be the same inscription, written in three ancient languages, including ancient Persian. Rawlinson first read the inscription in this language known to him, and then managed to understand the other 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 Sumerian heritage 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 see how over 500 years hieroglyphic images of numerals turned into cuneiform ones.

Modification of the numerals of the Sumerian language from hieroglyphs to cuneiform