#Cuneiform Script

[jackoshadows]

A 3,800-year-old Akkadian cuneiform tablet was found during the archaeological excavations carried out in the Aççana Mound, the old city of Alalakh, in the Reyhanlı district of Hatay city in southern Turkey.

Removing the wall rubble as part of the study, the team found a cuneiform clay tablet among the remains.

In the first examination of the Akkadian tablet, information regarding the agreement made by Yarim-Lim, the first known king of Alalakh, to buy another city was found.

Akar emphasized that the tablet found among the remains, dating back 3,800 years, is in a well-preserved form. "While removing the debris of a few collapsed walls at the mound, it was very exciting to come across a tablet that had never been touched or damaged," he said.

Akar continued by stating that the historical period of the artifact extends to the Middle Bronze Age. "During the Middle Bronze Age, a period we define as such, we observe that the kings of this region possessed economic power. This is evidenced by astonishing examples documented in written records. In this tablet, we see that Yarim-Lim, the first known king of Alalakh, intended to purchase another city and, in this regard, entered into an agreement. This actually demonstrates that the kings in this region had the economic capability and potential to acquire another city," he said.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Akar, who pointed out that the tablet would also contribute to understanding the economic structure of the era, stated,

"The tablet likely contains the names of significant individuals from the city who witnessed this sale. In a sense, we see evidence of a witness list from that period,"

"The work came out as an extremely unique example, especially to decipher the economic structure of that period, the relationship between cities, and the economic and political model," he said.

[raffaellopalandri]

The Human Pursuit of Knowledge, a fascinating event

Daily writing promptWhat historical event fascinates you the most?View all responses When people ask me which historical event fascinates me the most, I find it difficult, if not impossible, to point to a single moment or occurrence. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com Historical events, as I see them, are simply events—occurrences that shape our world but ultimately depend on our individual…

[eyesontime-luxury-watches]

Montblanc is honouring the 100th anniversary of its Meisterstück writing instrument with a remarkable tribute to Enheduanna, the world’s earliest known author, through the new Montblanc Star Legacy Suspended Exo Tourbillon Skeleton.

This extraordinary timepiece encapsulates the historical significance of writing and its evolution from ancient Mesopotamia.

[sakuraswordly]

[sannehnagi]

Matit' matip'it ušivaiitš'ikin, matirap' itakitšiš. You -that-knows may show he-that-knows, he-that-does-not-know may not see.

[polysprachig]

What was the first thing you did when creating your conlang? Did you start with the Latin alphabet or did you start with the cuneiform? Or something totally different?

The first thing I did when creating my conlang Ätchgö was to work on how the script would look. This was before anything but the name of the language, its literal meaning and a handful of key words were in my mind; I hadn't even fully worked out the sounds of it at that point, although personal verb endings and pronouns had been listed out (and later altered).

At the time it wasn't cuneiform, but it could be read from top to bottom or right to left. Some students at the uni I was studying at asked me if it was Chinese, but I think I was trying to make it look similar to Arabic back then. (I knew the region the Bronze-age Ätchgöans were from, plus there were signs all over the uni for free Arabic classes which had the alphabet on them.)

It looked laugh if you will like this:

Needless to say it was a D: idea when looking back on it now. Also, I just want to note that there was a strong Irish influence on the grammar at that time, and its since also been developed into something else.

Whereas this is the new cuneiform script:

The text on the left is an epitaph written in a hybrid semi-standard text which includes some traditional characters (often incorrectly), as it was written by a foreign travelling companion of an Ätchgöan kerim (traveller/explorer) upon the latter's death and buried with the kerim as a grave good.

The right shows the most recent grammatical additions (literally from this past week) to the Ätchgöan standard, which mean to clarify words by topic. Ex. a djjan is a 'tool' used for 'lemah' (building). It can become a 'long tool' with the adjective 'leh' (long), but if you add a 'sek' (content marker signifying 'death'), it changes from a long tool into a spear, sword, weapon, etc.

The cuneiform script can be read from top to bottom or left to right.

[sere-ness-ima]

[this-is-a-new-low-for-me]

Get handed an open summoning book but they forget I love trying new words and I immediately speak the ancient chant. No hesitation. No idea what it says or does. I just like the way unfamiliar words feel as I speak them. I mispronounce everything horribly. The demon is here and judging me.

[dadaonice]

Back to cuneiform school

[stankhead]

Mesoamerica having one of the four recognized independent inventions of writing and Europe having 0 🤭 you have to laugh

[incesthemes]

i don't think they actually tried with this one

[whencyclopedia]

Alphabet

The history of the alphabet started in ancient Egypt. By 2700 BCE Egyptian writing had a set of some 22 hieroglyphs to represent syllables that begin with a single consonant of their language, plus a vowel (or no vowel) to be supplied by the native speaker. These glyphs were used as pronunciation guides for logograms, to write grammatical inflections, and, later, to transcribe loan words and foreign names. However, although seemingly alphabetic in nature, the original Egyptian uniliterals were not a system and were never used by themselves to encode Egyptian speech. In the Middle Bronze Age an apparently "alphabetic" system known as the Proto-Sinaitic script is thought by some to have been developed in central Egypt around 1700 BCE for or by Semitic workers, but only one of these early writings has been deciphered and their exact nature remains open to interpretation. Based on letter appearances and names, it is believed to be based on Egyptian hieroglyphs. This script eventually developed into the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, which in turn was refined into the Phoenician alphabet. It also developed into the South Arabian alphabet, from which the Ge'ez alphabet (an abugida) is descended. Note that the scripts mentioned above are not considered proper alphabets, as they all lack characters representing vowels. These early vowelless alphabets are called abjads and still exist in scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac. Phoenician was the first major phonemic script. In contrast to two other widely used writing systems at the time, cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, it contained only about two dozen distinct letters, making it a script simple enough for common traders to learn. Another advantage of Phoenician was that it could be used to write down many different languages since it recorded words phonemically.

Phoenician colonization allowed the script to be spread across the Mediterranean. In Greece, the script was modified to add the vowels, giving rise to the first true alphabet. The Greeks took letters which did not represent sounds that existed in Greek and changed them to represent the vowels. This marks the creation of a "true" alphabet, with both vowels and consonants as explicit symbols in a single script. In its early years, there were many variants of the Greek alphabet, a situation which caused many different alphabets to evolve from it. The Cumae form of the Greek alphabet was carried over by Greek colonists from Euboea to the Italian peninsula, where it gave rise to a variety of alphabets used to inscribe the Italic languages. One of these became the Latin alphabet, which was spread across Europe as the Romans expanded their empire. Even after the fall of the Roman Empire, the alphabet survived in intellectual and religious works. It eventually became used for the descendant languages of Latin (the Romance languages) and then for the other languages of Europe.

Continue reading...

[perplexingly]

lost control of my life, about to drop everything and study cuneiform script

[linguisticdiscovery]

A lost Canaanite language called Amorite has been decoded thanks to the discovery of bilingual tablets, similar to the way the Rosetta Stone helped scholars decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The tablets were written in Amorite and Akkadian using the cuneiform script. Prior to the discovery of these tablets there was such little written evidence for Amorite that some scholars doubted whether it even existed. Amorite was a Canaanite language related to Hebrew, in the Semitic language family.

Pretty cool, Amorite? 😅

[gingerest-ale]

Listen he’s trying really hard ok

This comic is based on Language Barriers by the amazing @quasar-crew!! I love this fic so much and I was thrilled to be able to make ark for it for the LU Writers Appreciation Project!

I also thought it was a great time to bring out the language nerd in me, so it was fun researching different scripts that could work to represent the different languages!! (Although the research mainly comes from Wikipedia, so I can’t guarantee accuracy) Breakdown under the cut!

Hylian: I used the in-game hylian script for this one

Goron: the script is Old Persian cuneiform! I picked this one because I thought the look fit well and it’s a script designed to be primarily cut into stone

Zora: the script is nushkuri, a writing system used for the Georgian language. It was picked because was trying to match the script that’s present on the Zora monuments in botw, which is also why I added a heavy slant to it!

Rito: this script is Tifinagh, used to write Berber languages. This one was mostly picked because I thought the look fit well!

Gerudo: this is the Gerudo alphabet, it makes it’s first appearance in Ocarina of Time!

[hrrtshape]

Okay we NEED story time from your vampire dr!❤️🙏

the chronicles of my vampire dr....as a babylonian witchy princess. part one !!!

day 1 . . . i shifted.

i woke up in my chambers and oh my god… it was green. not like. regular green. but lush. enchanting. like i was about to be serenaded by a mythical creature or get sacrificed to an ancient god. no phone. which… rude. but i was too busy inhaling rose oil, myrrh (which, yeah, kind of like a resin??), and jasmine to process my distress.

i let out a few choice curse words (thank god no one heard), and then. it hit me. all my past memories. childhood, teenagehood, all 18 years of my life here just… slotted into place like i had downloaded them off some divine dropbox.

then my attendants. ladies-in-waiting, i guess? appeared, all fluttery and fussing, pulling back my gauzy linen bed drapes like i was the sun incarnate. fresh pomegranate juice in my hand before i even asked. and, look, i wasn’t about to complain. next stop: bathing.

i was led to a private bath, where perfumed water was poured over me from this ridiculously intricate ceramic jug. skin scrubbed with ground barley and honey, then massaged with sesame oil infused with cedarwood and jasmine. so yes. weird. because my dr self is used to it but my cr self was internally screaming. i could do this myself?? but also… why would i??

then. dressing. sheer, gold-threaded linen, draped in jewels. thick gold cuffs, lapis lazuli amulets, gemstone rings. and okay. gold?? not my best colour (thank you, dyed blonde-ish ginger hair). but i had no say. my hair was braided, perfumed, pinned with gold, eyes rimmed in kohl, lips stained red, cheeks dusted with crushed rose petals. i was… presentable.

breakfast ! extravagant but delicate. honeyed flatbreads. dates. figs. apricots in wine (which, yeah, legal drinking age? unheard of). fresh goat’s milk infused with saffron. i was living the dream.

post-breakfast, intellectual pursuits. cuneiform tablets. poetry, legal docs, noble correspondence. astrologers were summoned because, hello, witch. every move, written in the stars. i was also treated to scribes reciting poetry. so, academia? check.

afternoon. time to be seen. temple of ishtar. offerings of honey cakes, incense, perfumed oils. a priestess blessed me, very much reminding everyone i was semi-divine (lowkey, but let’s be real, highkey). generals and noblemen bowed as i passed, because, obviously.

the rest of the afternoon? leisure. lyres and harps. fig wine. my father’s collection of lions, cheetahs, exotic birds. gossiping with noblewomen about husbands in debt, outdated jewellery, who got cursed by a priest. sometimes, diplomat visits. i’d just sit there draped in lapis and pearls, my presence alone a political statement. effortless.

sunset. babylon glowing under torchlight. feast time. figs, meat, dates, pomegranates, deep deep (i mean, deeeep) red wine. but the real game is politics. seduction. social climbing. noblemen desperately trying to impress me. i was internally screaming. externally....effortlessly cool.

then. loml (one of them), lily-rose, and i snuck off to the rooftop gardens. cushions, stars, spiced wine, whispered secrets. cinematic.

before bed, i consulted the stars. omens, incense, prayers. the whole celestial-divine fate thing. and, look, it was weird. because i felt magic in me. but apparently, i needed a grimoire to access it. and that was… off-limits.

finally. my perfumed chambers. attendants massaging my hands and feet with almond oil. then. alone.

or not.

two years ago, i called upon a guardian angel. nosferatu vibes. but instead. i got… him. coriolanus. 3000-year-old vampire. for two years, he’s haunted my dreams. not like. nightmare haunted. no. tender haunted. and tonight? he was here. or. it was a vivid dream.

either way. he told me, in three days, we would be of one body and soul. then he disappeared.

so. yeah. that happened.

day two. . . the script remains unchanged.

bathe, dress in linen that clings like a whisper, let them anoint me with oils that smell of myrrh and something older than time. breakfast is honeycakes and date wine, taken while my attendants spill court secrets in hushed, delighted tones. education follows. sumerian, akkadian, the stars. the babylonians invented horoscopes, did you know? they like to remind me. temple visits, prayers, offerings. gardens. music. poetry. the shape of my life is so symmetrical it could be mapped onto the constellations.

but then. a shift. a thread pulled just slightly out of place. the temple priests are uneasy !!! an eclipse, a dead bird at the ziggurat’s steps, the sacred flames guttering, turning blue. i wake from fevered dreams, my mind still thick with the vision....coryo standing at the edge of my chamber, all shadow and silk. his voice, smooth as oil over marble. two more nights.

meanwhile. my betrothed (because of course i have one. a war general, brutish, dull-eyed, why). he senses something, something wrong. he does not have the words for it, but it slithers into his bones. he grips my wrist too tightly, voice sharp, desperate. an attempt at power. i know the truth. the real power is coming.

day three. . . the script does not change.

bathe, dress, the oils, the honey, the wine. the lessons. the offerings. the songs. the theatre of it all. but outside, the air is taut, wound like a bowstring. war drums murmur in the distance. the wind carries incense and the promise of rain. in the temple, a sacrifice. a blessing for my union, they say, but the blood curdles too fast. the priests turn pale. the gods, it seems, are watching.

and me...... i am unraveling. sleep is a rare visitor. i feel him even when i wake. a shadow in the hallway, a breath against my skin when i am alone. his touch lingers, not quite there, but cold where it was.

my betrothed unravels too. he sees things. flickers at the edge of his vision. his men whisper about curses. one of them dies, suddenly, inexplicably. i do not ask why.

and then, the dream again. tomorrow.

day four. . . the one where i meet him.

same routine. bathe, dress. linen so fine it may as well be woven from moonlight. oils massaged into my skin until i gleam like an offering. breakfast is honeycakes, warm and sticky between my fingers, date wine that makes my lips sweet. the ladies whisper of court scandals, the chamberlains mutter about politics. i nod, pretend to listen. later, lessons. sumerian, akkadian, astrology. i trace constellations in the air, the same stars that have ruled over every king and whatnot before me. temples, if i have the patience. incense curls into the sky. the priests chant. i press my lips together and let them believe i am devout.

poetry in the gardens. lyres and flutes. silks draped over marble benches. the scent of crushed petals. something tugs at me. impatience? anticipation? dread?

by sunset, my fiancé is dead.

poison? an accident in the bathhouse? found in his chamber, white-lipped and hollow-eyed, drained of every last drop? speculation grips the court. the wedding is canceled. condolences pile at my feet like wilted flowers. my mourning dress is laid out.

but i am waiting......

the city quiets. the torches burn low. the palace is vast and empty. and then. then, he comes.

i wear white silk, sheer as mist, the fabric whispering against my skin. flowers in my hair, their fragrance heavy in the heat. i stand at my balcony, hands clasped. i whisper the words, just above a breath. i bid you, come to me.

in the obsidian mirror, my own reflection wavers, shadowed by something else. someone else. his hands find my waist, his fingers cold against the heat of my skin. he brushes my hair aside. a breath, just at my throat.

on the third night, i belong to him.