Cuneiform
The Legacy of Mesopotamia:
Cuneiform
• How many of you know what barley is?
• How is it used?
• What does it look like in its natural state?
• The first Mesopotamian written
representation of barley was a picture…
The Legacy of Mesopotamia:
Cuneiform
• This is what barley
looks like…
• If you were going
to make a
pictogram of
barley what would
it look like?
Our Barley Pictograms…
The Legacy of Mesopotamia:
Cuneiform
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What does picture writing do well?
What advantages does picture writing have?
What are its weaknesses?
Can a pictograph convey what the word it is
depicting sounds like?
The Legacy of Mesopotamia:
Cuneiform
• What’s the relationship between the way our
word “barley” looks and barley itself?
• What are the elements of our word for barley
• How do we know that the symbols which make
up the word represent the grain?
• The word “barley” is the phonetic representations of the
sounds of the word as we say it that connect the written
word to the concept.
• In Mesopotamia “barley” was called “she”
Let’s…Read About
Cuneiform
“Barley”
• Around 3100 B.C. people began to record
amounts of different crops. Barley was one of
the most important crops in southern
Mesopotamia and when it was first drawn it
looked like this.
“Barley”
• The barley sign changed shape when the
scribes used a writing tool with a squaredoff end instead of a point.
• The end of this tool was used to press wedge
shapes like these into clay tablets.
The barley sign had
to be written using
several wedges.
“Barley”
• Another change was that the tablets were
written so that all of the signs appeared to be
lying on their side.
“Barley”
• Not only the shape, but also the use of the sign had
been changing. The barley sign could now be used in
two ways:
– It could represent barley, as on this tablet
– It could also be used to represent a sound. The Sumerian
word for barley was 'she'. So the barley sign was used to
represent the sound 'she' in a word.
• For example, this tablet tells us about fig cakes given out from the
temple. The Sumerian word for fig cake is 'she-er-ku'.
'She-er-ku'
“Barley”
• The barley sign was used for over three
thousand years. The way that it looked and
the way that it was used changed in many
ways.
• One of the last ever appearances of the barley
cuneiform sign is on this tablet from 61AD.
Other Examples of Evolving Characters:
Head
c. 3100BC
c. 2800BC
c. 2400BC
c. 600BC
Other Examples of Evolving Characters:
Bird
c. 3100BC
c. 2800BC
c. 2400BC
c. 600BC
Other Examples of Evolving Characters:
Ox
c. 3100BC
c. 2800BC
c. 2400BC
c. 600BC
Other Examples of Evolving Characters:
Palm
c. 3100BC
c. 2800BC
c. 2400BC
c. 600BC
Other Examples of Evolving Characters:
Tree
c. 3100BC
c. 2800BC
c. 2400BC
c. 600BC
How do we know what it says?
• Knowledge of cuneiform was lost until AD 1835
• Henry Rawlinson, an English army officer, found
some inscriptions on a cliff at Behistun in Persia.
Carved in the reign of King Darius of Persia (522486 BC), they consisted of identical texts in three
languages: Old Persian, Babylonian (cuneiform)
and Elamite.
• After translating the Persian, Rawlinson began to
decipher the others.
• By 1851 he could read 200 cuneiform signs.
Behistun Inscription,
The Persian Rosetta Stone
Behistun Inscription,
The Persian Rosetta Stone
Behistun Inscription,
The Persian Rosetta Stone
Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1st Baronet
To Review…
• Cuneiform was first used
to record what?
• How did cuneiform
evolve from pictograms
to a phonetic language?
• What is the benefit of
picture writing? What is
its weakness?
Creating your own language
• Count off by 3s…
• Group 1: You will design a
language based on pictographs
• Group 2: You will design a
language based on hieroglyphics
• Group 3: You will design a
language based on an alphabet
To Clarify…
• A pictograph is a direct representation of a
things (i.e.- showing a picture of bird when
you refer to a bird) whereas a hieroglyph is
when you make the sound of the thing in
the picture (i.e.- when you see a picture of a
bird you make a sound like 'tweet‘), which is
why we can never really know what ancient
Egyptian sounds like because we don't
know if their birds sounded like 'tweet' or
'honk' or 'chirp'
Debriefing…
• Was it harder or easier than you thought to
develop your own writing system?
• Why do you suppose new writing systems
were invented?
• Why do you think there are so many
languages and writing systems in the world?
• What type of new writing systems are being
developed today? How are they designed?
Now it’s your turn…
1. Take enough clay to fit in
the palm of your hand and
form it into a flat square
about an inch thick.
2. Use the chart on to
find the cuneiform
versions of the letters
you want to write.
Hold the clay in one
hand and take a reed
or pencil in the other,
pressing into the clay
to make wedge-shaped
marks.
3. Pass your tablet to a
friend and see if they
can decode your
message! (Let the clay
dry overnight. )