Abstract
The invention of writing in Mesopotamia c. 3200 BC was revolutionary. Before that, no-one read or wrote anything, and thought nothing of it. The cuneiform writing system was a powerful and flexible system that was used for more than 3500 years. Half a million documents survive, revealing in exquisite detail life in some of Man’s first cities. We learn about politics, economics, law, medicine, early science, religion, and daily life. Their astronomy and mathematics in particular were prized by later cultures, and their habit of counting in 60s is still very much alive in the modern world.
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Notes
- 1.
It is important to keep in mind the distinction between something being the first of its kind and it being the first step on the way to the modern equivalent. The connections are usually more subtle and indirect. Cuneiform is not directly ancestral to any currently used writing system, for example. Some scholars argue that it inspired ancient Egyptian writing, which in turn inspired the alphabet. Mesopotamian cuneiform is fascinating to us because it provides a wealth of evidence detailing some of the first efforts of Man to struggle with issues we still face today. Charpin 2010 offers an interesting overview of what literacy meant in Mesopotamia.
- 2.
See http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId = 327218&partId = 1 for an example of a tablet bearing these signs.
- 3.
The original tablet can be seen at http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId = 327216&partId = 1.
References
Collon, D. 2005. First impressions: Cylinder seals in the ancient near east. London: British Museum Press.
Finkel, I., and J. Taylor. 2015. Cuneiform. London: British Museum Press.
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Robson, E. 2008. Mathematics in ancient Iraq: A social history. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Further Reading
Charpin, D. 2010. Reading and writing in Babylon. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press.
Crawford, H. 2013. The Sumerian world. Abingdon: Routledge.
Leick, G. 2007. The Babylonian world. Abingdon: Routledge.
Radner, K., and E. Robson. 2011. The Oxford handbook of Cuneiform culture. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Van de Mieroop, M. 2004. A history of the ancient near east, ca. 3000–323 BC. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
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Taylor, J. (2017). The Invention of Cuneiform and the Dawn of the Modern World. In: Tsuneki, A., Yamada, S., Hisada, Ki. (eds) Ancient West Asian Civilization. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0554-1_10
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