Feb 03, 2021 23:00:00

How to write the oldest human character 'cuneiform'

The

Mesopotamian civilization , which is the oldest civilization in the world and one of the four major civilizations in the world, is said to have prospered in a part of Iraq today. The British Museum explains how to write the oldest human character, ' cuneiform ', which has been used in such Mesopotamian civilization for over 3000 years.

How to write cuneiform – The British Museum Blog
https://blog.britishmuseum.org/how-to-write-cuneiform/

Cuneiform is a character that has been used for more than 3000 years from about 3400 BC to about 100 AD. Originally a widely used letter in the Mesopotamian civilization, it was later used by neighboring peoples to write their own language in areas such as Akkad, Babylonia, Elam, Hittite, and Assyria. I did. There are two main languages written in cuneiform, Sumerian and Akkadian, but 12 languages , including Hittite , a sister language of Latin, are also written in cuneiform.

The clay tablet on which ' Gilgamesh Epic ', one of the oldest stories in the world and the hero of Gilgamesh , known as the legendary king of Mesopotamian civilization, is also written in cuneiform.

The cuneiform characters are said to have been developed by a writer who keeps track of the amount of bread and beer distributed in Mesopotamia.

The alphabet widely used in the modern world is called a

phonetic character, and each character expresses a vowel or consonant. On the other hand, cuneiform is a syllabary that represents a syllable that combines vowels and consonants with a single character . Therefore, in the alphabet, cats are written with the three letters 'cat', but cuneiform letters can be written with the two letters 'ca' and 'at'.

Irving Finkel and Jonathan Taylor, who organize the collection of cuneiform characters at the British Museum, have created a chart that summarizes the connections between each cuneiform character and syllables. Below is a partial excerpt of the chart.

The full version of the chart is summarized in the book '

Cuneiform ' by Finkel and Taylor.

Cuneiform characters are mainly written on clay tablets, but it is very difficult to actually carve cuneiform characters on clay with your own hands. The British Museum publishes 'How to write cuneiform characters using sticks and clay' by Mr. Finkel on YouTube in movie format, so those who are particular about 'If you actually write cuneiform characters, you can only write on clay tablets' Please check it out.

Irving Finkel teaches how to write cuneiform I Curator's Corner Season 4 Episode 8 #CuratorsCorner --YouTube