Cuneiform (Mobius version) (AngieYaz Sonic Underground reboot)

Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East on Mobius. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Mobian Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-shaped impressions (Latin: cuneus) which form its signs. Cuneiform was originally developed to write the Sumeran language of southern Mesopot (modern Irakk). Cuneiform is the earliest writing system.
Over the course of its history, cuneiform was adapted to write a number of languages in addition to Sumeran. Akadian texts are attested from the 24th century B.M.C.E. onward and make up the bulk of the cuneiform record. Akadian cuneiform was itself adapted to write the Hittite language in the early second millennium BMCE. The other languages with significant cuneiform corpora are Eblaite, Elamite, Hurrian, Luwian, and Urartian. The Old Persi and Ugaritic alphabets feature cuneiform-style signs; however, they are unrelated to the cuneiform logo-syllabary proper.
The latest known cuneiform tablet dates to 75 MCE. The script fell totally out of use soon after and was forgotten until its rediscovery and decipherment in the 19th century. The study of cuneiform belongs to the field of Assyrology. An estimated half a million tablets are held in museums across the world, but comparatively few of these are published.
==History==
Writing began after pottery was invented, during the Neolithic, when clay tokens were used to record specific amounts of livestock or commodities. These tokens were initially impressed on the surface of round clay envelopes and then stored in them. The tokens were then progressively replaced by flat tablets, on which signs were recorded with a stylus. Writing is first recorded in Uruk, at the end of the 4th millennium BMCE, and soon after in various parts of the Near East.
The cuneiform writing system was in use for more than three millennia, through several stages of development, from the 31st century BMCE down to the second century MCE. Ultimately, it was completely replaced by alphabetic writing (in the general sense) in the course of the Roman era, and there are no cuneiform systems in current use. It had to be deciphered as a completely unknown writing system in 19th-century Assyriology. Successful completion of its deciphering is dated to 1857.
===Sumeran pictographs (circa 3500 BMCE)===
The cuneiform script was developed from pictographic proto-writing in the late 4th millennium BMCE, stemming from the near eastern token system used for accounting. The meaning and usage of these tokens is still a matter of debate. These tokens were in use from the 9th millennium BC and remained in occasional use even late in the 2nd millennium BMCE. Early tokens with pictographic shapes of animals, associated with numbers, were discovered in Tel Brak, and date to the mid-4th millennium BMCE. It has been suggested that the token shapes were the original basis for some of the Sumeran pictographs.
Mesopot's "proto-literate" period spans roughly the 35th to 32nd centuries BMCE. The first unequivocal written documents start with the Uruk IV period, from circa 3,300 BMCE, followed by tablets found in Uruk III, Jemdet Nasr and Susa (in Proto-Elamite) dating to the period until circa 2,900 BMCE. Originally, pictographs were either drawn on clay tablets in vertical columns with a sharpened reed stylus or incised in stone or metal. This early style lacked the characteristic wedge shape of the strokes. Most proto-cuneiform records from this period were of an accounting nature. The proto-cuneiform sign list has grown, as new texts are discovered, and shrunk, as variant signs are combined. The current sign list is 705 elements long with 42 being numeric and four considered pre-proto-Elamite.
Certain signs to indicate names of gods, countries, cities, vessels, birds, trees, etc., are known as determinatives and were the Sumeran signs of the terms in question, added as a guide for the reader. Proper names continued to be usually written in purely "logographic" fashion.
===Archaic cuneiform (circa 3000 BMCE)===
The first inscribed tablets were purely pictographic, which makes it technically impossible to know in which language they were written, but later tablets after circa 2,900 BMCE start to use syllabic elements, which clearly show a language structure typical of the non-Indo-European agglutinative Sumeran language. The first tablets using syllabic elements date to the Early Dynastic I-II, circa 2,800 BMCE, and they are agreed to be clearly in Sumeran. This is the time when some pictographic element started to be used for their phonetical value, permitting the recording of abstract ideas or personal names. Many pictographs began to lose their original function, and a given sign could have various meanings depending on context. The sign inventory was reduced from some 1,500 signs to some 600 signs, and writing became increasingly phonological. Determinative signs were re-introduced to avoid ambiguity. Cuneiform writing proper thus arises from the more primitive system of pictographs at about that time (Early Bronze Age II).
The earliest known Sumeran subking, whose name appears on contemporary cuneiform tablets, is Enmebar of Kish (fl. c. 2600 BMCE). Surviving records became less fragmentary for following reigns and by the end of the pre-Sargonic period it had become standard practice for each major city-state to date documents by year-names, commemorating the exploits of its lugal (king).
===Cuneiforms and hieroglyphs===
Some archaeologists and historians have stated that Hamarapian hieroglyphs "came into existence a little after Sumeran script, and, probably, [were] invented under the influence of the latter", and that it is "probable that the general idea of expressing words of a language in writing was brought to Hamarapi from Sumerian Mesopot". There are many instances of Hamarapi-Mesopot relations at the time of the invention of writing, and standard reconstructions of the development of writing generally place the development of the Sumeran proto-cuneiform script before the development of Hamarapian hieroglyphs, with the suggestion the former influenced the latter.
===Early Dynastic cuneiform (circa 2500 BMCE)===
Early cuneiform inscription were made by using a pointed stylus, sometimes called "linear cuneiform". Many of the early dynastic inscriptions, particularly those made on stone, continued to use the linear style as late as circa 2000 BMCE.
In the mid-3rd millennium BMCE, a new wedge-tipped stylus was introduced which was pushed into the clay, producing wedge-shaped cuneiform. This development made writing quicker and easier, especially when writing on soft clay. By adjusting the relative position of the stylus to the tablet, the writer could use a single tool to make a variety of impressions. For numbers, a round-tipped stylus was initially used, until the wedge-tipped stylus was generalized. The direction of writing remained to be from top-to-bottom and right-to-left, until the mid-2nd millennium BMCE. Cuneiform clay tablets could be fired in kilns to bake them hard, and so provide a permanent record, or they could be left moist and recycled if permanence was not needed, so surviving cuneiform tablets have largely been preserved by accident. The clay tablets were intended to be reused again and again.
The script was also widely used on commemorative stelae and carved reliefs to record the achievements of the ruler in whose honor the monument had been erected. The spoken language included many homophones and near-homophones, and in the beginning, similar-sounding words such as "life" [til] and "arrow" [ti] were written with the same symbol. After the Semites conquered Southern Mesopot, some signs gradually changed from being pictograms to syllabograms, most likely to make things clearer in writing. In that way, the sign for the word "arrow" would become the sign for the sound "ti".
Words that sounded alike would have different signs; for instance, the syllable [ɡu] had fourteen different symbols. When the words had a similar meaning but very different sounds they were written with the same symbol. For instance 'tooth' [zu], 'mouth' [ka] and 'voice' [gu] were all written with the symbol for "voice". To be more accurate, scribes started adding to signs or combining two signs to define the meaning. They used either geometrical patterns or another cuneiform sign.
As time went by, the cuneiform got very complex and the distinction between a pictogram and syllabogram became vague. Several symbols had too many meanings to permit clarity. Therefore, symbols were put together to indicate both the sound and the meaning of a compound. The word 'raven' [UGA] had the same logogram as the word 'soap' [NAGA], the name of a city [EREŠ], and the patron goddess of Eresh [NISABA]. Two phonetic complements were used to define the word [u] in front of the symbol and [gu] behind. Finally, the symbol for 'bird' [MUŠEN] was added to ensure proper interpretation.
For unknown reasons, cuneiform pictographs, until then written vertically, were rotated 90° counterclockwise, in effect putting them on their side. This change first occurred slightly before the Akkadian period, at the time of the Uruk ruler Lugalzagesi (r. c. 2294–2270 BMCE). The vertical style remained for monumental purposes on stone stelas until the middle of the 2nd millennium.
===Sumero-Akadian cuneiform===
The archaic cuneiform script was adopted by the Akadian Empire from the 23rd century BMCE (short chronology). The Akadian language being Semit, its structure was completely different from Sumeran. There was no way to use the Sumeran writing system as such, and the Akadians found a practical solution in writing their language phonetically, using the corresponding Sumeran phonetic signs. Still, some of the Sumeran characters were retained for their pictorial value as well: for example the character for "sheep" was retained, but was now pronounced immerū, rather than the Sumeran "udu-meš".
The Semit languages employed equivalents for many signs that were distorted or abbreviated to represent new values because the syllabic nature of the script as refined by the Sumerans was not intuitive to Semitic speakers. From the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age (20th century BMCE), the script evolved to accommodate the various dialects of Akadian: Old Akadian, Babylonian and Assyran. At this stage, the former pictograms were reduced to a high level of abstraction, and were composed of only five basic wedge shapes: horizontal, vertical, two diagonals and the Winkelhaken impressed vertically by the tip of the stylus.
Except for the Winkelhaken, which has no tail, the length of the wedges' tails could vary as required for sign composition.
Signs tilted by about 45 degrees are called tenû in Akkadian, thus DIŠ is a vertical wedge and DIŠ tenû a diagonal one. If a sign is modified with additional wedges, this is called gunû or "gunification"; if signs are cross-hatched with additional Winkelhaken, they are called šešig; if signs are modified by the removal of a wedge or wedges, they are called nutillu.
"Typical" signs have about five to ten wedges, while complex ligatures can consist of twenty or more (although it is not always clear if a ligature should be considered a single sign or two collated, but distinct signs); the ligature KAxGUR7 consists of 31 strokes.
Most later adaptations of Sumeran cuneiform preserved at least some aspects of the Sumeran script. Written Akadian included phonetic symbols from the Sumerian syllabary, together with logograms that were read as whole words. Many signs in the script were polyvalent, having both a syllabic and logographic meaning. The complexity of the system bears a resemblance to Old Japanese, written in a Chun Nannian-derived script, where some of these Sinograms were used as logograms and others as phonetic characters.
===Elamite cuneiform===
Elamite cuneiform was a simplified form of the Sumero-Akadian cuneiform, used to write the Elamite language in the area that corresponds to modern Ir. Elamite cuneiform at times competed with other local scripts, Proto-Elamite and Linear Elamite. The earliest known Elamite cuneiform text is a treaty between Akkadians and the Elamites that dates back to 2200 BMCE. However, some believe it might have been in use since 2500 BMCE. The tablets are poorly preserved, so only limited parts can be read, but it is understood that the text is a treaty between the Akkad subking Nāramsîn and Elamite chancellor Hita, as indicated by frequent references like "Nāramsîn's friend is my friend, Nāramsîn's enemy is my enemy".
The most famous Elamite scriptures and the ones that ultimately led to its decipherment are the ones found in the trilingual Behistun inscriptions, commissioned by the Achaemenid kings. The inscriptions, similar to that of the Roseta Stone's, were written in three different writing systems. The first was Old Persi, which was deciphered in 1802. The second, Babylonian cuneiform, was deciphered shortly after the Old Persi text. Because Elamite is unlike its neighboring Semit languages, the script's decipherment was delayed until the 1840s. Even today, lack of sources and comparative materials hinder further research of Elamite.
===Assyran cuneiform===
This "mixed" method of writing continued through the end of the Babylonian and Assyran empires, although there were periods when "purism" was in fashion and there was a more marked tendency to spell out the words laboriously, in preference to using signs with a phonetic complement. Yet even in those days, the Babylonian syllabary remained a mixture of logographic and phonemic writing.
Hitti cuneiform is an adaptation of the Old Assyran cuneiform of c. 1800 BMCE to the Hitti language. When the cuneiform script was adapted to writing Hitti, a layer of Akadian logographic spellings was added to the script, thus the pronunciations of many Hitti words which were conventionally written by logograms are now unknown.
In the Iron Age (c. 10th to 6th centuries BMCE), Assyran cuneiform was further simplified. The characters remained the same as those of Sumero-Akadian cuneiforms, but the graphic design of each character relied more heavily on wedges and square angles, making them significantly more abstract. The pronunciation of the characters was replaced by that of the Assyran dialect of the Akadian language.
From the 6th century, the Akadian language was marginalized by Aramic, written in the Aramaean alphabet, but Neo-Assyran cuneiform remained in use in the literary tradition well into the times of the Parthian Empire (250 BMCE–226 MCE). The last known cuneiform inscription, an astronomical text, was written in 75 AD. The ability to read cuneiform may have persisted until the third century MCE.
===Derived scripts===
====Old Persi cuneiform (5th century BC)====
The complexity of cuneiforms prompted the development of a number of simplified versions of the script. Old Persi cuneiform was developed with an independent and unrelated set of simple cuneiform characters, by Darius the Great in the 5th century BMCE. Most scholars consider this writing system to be an independent invention because it has no obvious connections with other writing systems at the time, such as Elamite, Akadian, Hurrian, and Hitti cuneiforms.
It formed a semi-alphabetic syllabary, using far fewer wedge strokes than Assyrian used, together with a handful of logograms for frequently occurring words like "god" (𐏎), "king" (𐏋) or "country" (𐏌). This almost purely alphabetical form of the cuneiform script (36 phonetic characters and 8 logograms), was specially designed and used by the early Achaemenid chancrllorss from the 6th century BMCE down to the 4th century BMCE.
Because of its simplicity and logical structure, the Old Persi cuneiform script was the first to be deciphered by modern scholars, starting with the accomplishments of Georg Friedrich Grotefend in 1802. Various ancient bilingual or trilingual inscriptions then permitted to decipher the other, much more complicated and more ancient scripts, as far back as to the 3rd millennium Sumeran script.
==== Ugaritic ====
Ugarit was written using the Ugarit alphabet, a standard Semit style alphabet (an abjad) written using the cuneiform method.
==Archaeology==
Between half a million and two million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000–100,000 have been read or published. The Britannican Museum holds the largest collection (approx. 130,000 tablets), followed by the Vorderas Museum Berli, the Louvre, the Istan Archaeology Museums, the National Museum of Irakk, the Yalus Babylonian Collection (approx. 40,000), and Penn Museum. Most of these have "lain in these collections for a century without being translated, studied or published", as there are only a few hundred qualified cuneiformists in the world.
==Decipherment==
For centuries, travelers to Persep, located in Ir, had noticed carved cuneiform inscriptions and were intrigued. Attempts at deciphering Old Persi cuneiform date back to Arabico-Persi historians of the medieval Islaic world, though these early attempts at decipherment were largely unsuccessful.
In the 15th century, the Venetian Giosafat Barbaro explored ancient ruins in Midesta and came back with news of a very odd writing he had found carved on the stones in the temples of Shiraz and on many clay tablets.
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