The oldest known written language,
cuneiform,
first used by the ancient peoples of the
Near East
over 5000 years ago, is composed of a
series of
wedge-shaped incisions made with a
sharpened
reed stylus. This script was adopted by
all the
major civilizations of Mesopotamia for
recording
their distinct languages, including the
Sumerians,
Akkadians, Assyrians, and Babylonians.
Clay
tablets were the preferred media for
everyday
writing because they could either be
easily
recycled or, if a permanent record was
required,
fired in a kiln and preserved. The
earliest
recorded inscriptions are not myths of
histories,
but rather banal economic transactions
and
accounting documents. Later, one of the
most
famous written works of the ancient
world,
Hammurabi’s code, was recorded in the
cuneiform script. While these marks may
appear
obscure and mysterious to our eyes,
scholars
have made much progress in deciphering
cuneiform after discovering inscriptions
on the
Behistun Rock, a cliff in western Iran.
Much like
the Rosetta Stone, the Behistun
Inscription
contained the same text written in three
different languages (Persian,
Babylonian, and
Elamite), all of which utilized the
cuneiform
system of writing. Due to the
resemblance of
these languages to modern ones, scholars
were
able to crack to code.
This terracotta tablet reveals just how
intricate a
system of writing cuneiform was. In the
hands of
a talented scribe, a remarkable amount
of
information could be squeezed into a
relatively
small space and yet still remain
legible. Both the
front and back of this tablet have been
written
on, containing a total of two hundred
fifty-three
lines of text. Like most tablets that
survive, the
text is concerned with administrative
matters,
listing expense accounts and giving the
equivalent monetary value for a range of
items,
including "1 mina of silver, price of
textiles", "5
minas of silver, price of slave", "3
talents of white
plaster", "1 linen mura", "2 shekels of
gold", "4
sila of fine oil", "2 sila of honey",
"1.60 gur of
bitumen, its silver 3 shekels, via
Shamash-bani,
basket maker" and "7 slaves, their
market value
15 shekels each." dated from the first
month of
Nisan, the year of the statue Shamash,
to the
first day of the eleventh month of
Shabatu in the
following year, this fascinating tablet
may have
been little more than an invoice or
contract
during its own time. However, today,
this work
provides valuable insight into the
domestic
affairs of the Ancient Babylonians while
also
serving as an astounding example of how
aesthetically refined the cuneiform
script was.
- (X.0129)
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