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Cuneiform [note 1] is a logo-syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. [3] The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. [4] Cuneiform scripts are marked by and named for the characteristic wedge-shaped impressions (Latin: cuneus) which form their ...
[4] [5] It did not use syllabo-tonic versification, [6] and the writing system precludes detection of rhythm, metre, rhyme, or alliteration. [1] Quantitative analysis of other possible poetic features seems to be lacking, or has been intentionally hidden by the scribes who recorded the writing [ citation needed ] .
A more recent theory, defended by Jean-Jacques Glassner, argues that from the beginning writing was more than just a managerial tool; it was also a method for recording concepts and language (i.e. Sumerian), because from its invention the signs did not only represent real objects (pictograms) but also ideas (ideograms), along with their ...
Cuneiform is one of the earliest systems of writing, emerging in Sumer in the late fourth millennium BC.. Archaic versions of cuneiform writing, including the Ur III (and earlier, ED III cuneiform of literature such as the Barton Cylinder) are not included due to extreme complexity of arranging them consistently and unequivocally by the shape of their signs; [1] see Early Dynastic Cuneiform ...
A typical plene writing involved a sequence such as (C)V-V(-VC/CV), e.g. πΌπ ama-a for /amaa/ < {ama-e} "the mother (ergative case)"). [130] Sumerian texts vary in the degree to which they use logograms or opt for syllabic (phonetic) spellings instead: e.g. the word π» gΜar "put" may also be written phonetically as π·π gΜa 2-ar.
Subsequent research showed that during the 2nd millennium BC, cuneiform writing had also been used for other languages such as Ugaritic, Hurrian, Hittite or Elamite, which became subsumed under the increasingly ambiguous term Assyriology. Today the term designates the study of texts written in cuneiform script, irrespective of whether the ...
Actual decipherment did not take place until the beginning of the 19th century, initiated by Georg Friedrich Grotefend in his study of Old Persian cuneiform. He was followed by Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin in 1822 and Rasmus Christian Rask in 1823, who was the first to decipher the name Achaemenides and the consonants m and n.
The cuneiform sign for "lugal" serves as a determinative in cuneiform texts, indicating that the following word would be the name of a king. The definition of "lugal" during the ED period of Mesopotamia is uncertain. The ruler of a city-state was usually referred to as "ensi". However, the ruler of a confederacy may have been referred to as ...