#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...

[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!

[eretzyisrael]

hist0ricalarchive

The Tel al-Rimah stele, dating to the 8th century BCE, is an artifact from the reign of Adad-nirari III of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. It was discovered at Tell al-Rimah in modern Iraq, the stone stele is inscribed with cuneiform script detailing the king's military campaigns, conquests, and the tributes imposed on subjugated territories. Notably, it mentions Jehoash (Joash) [The Samarian], king of Israel, as one of the rulers who paid tribute to Adad-nirari III, which aligns with Biblical accounts of Assyrian dominance over Israel and Judah during this period.

[the-insouciant-scientist]

Coins of the Neath! This is only about half of the project I have planned, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to show off what I have so far.

Descriptions and explanations under the cut!

Top left is a First City Coin. Described in game as having a cedar on one side, and a circle of script around either a face in profile, a pair of eyes, or an image of the Bazaar on the other side. The script is a mix of proto-cuneiform, archaic Sumerian ideograms/pictograms, and symbols of my own design, and is intended to translate more-or-less to "The Masters approach/bind the King to divide the earth, to guard his prince's heart. The Bazaar's oath to see the sun is the foundation and the destiny". It's roughly the story of the First City's fall, and the Bazaar's quest. The face is based on some representations of Gilgamesh, as a reference to May.

Top right is Hinterland Scrip. In game it appears to be more the paper money kind of scrip, but I'm from a coal and steel industry city and go nuts for scrip coinage, so this was a little self indulgent. It's a 50¢ coin since one scrip is about equal to 50p in game. The naming of the fake company is mostly just me wanting to both include hinterland in the name, and not have to cram in "the great hellbound railway company" on such a small coin lmao. 1899 is a personal reference to when I unlocked the railway. The punch design is a reference to FB's logo.

Center is a rat shilling! Not uh, technically coins, but I wanted to draw a rat. They're described in game as a flat piece of metal, sometimes a button, with a rat face scratched into one side and a knot of tails scratched into the other. One side reads "valid until no longer valid", which I find absolutely hysterical. I tried to invoke a kind of rostygold color to this one, since that's what it reverts to when the rat market closes.

Middle right is a Justificande coin. They aren't described very much in game, just that they're seven sided and say "one day you will forgive" on the back. So I took a lot of artistic liberties with this one! The seven headed serpent and roses are both very common Iremi symbols, so it made sense to me that they'd be featured on their currency.

Bottom left is a Fourth City Echo. Described in game as having a familiar profile of a spire on one side, and hudum writing on the other. Talking to the Numismatrix gives you further info that the writing is a promise for repayment, and a warning against using any other currency. I had to translate this through two different translators in order to get traditional hudum script (they use Mongolian Cyrillic nowadays more commonly) so it may not be perfectly accurate, but from left to right it should read "One Echo. The Only Currency."

And then bottom right is an Amber Ha'Penny. They're described as being tiny, sticky, and stamped with the image of a chain. It's supposed to be the same image of a chain on both sides, one being broken and one being forged, but I decided to have the sides slightly vary to reflect that better.