Notes

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TOP: The Cyrus cylinder, a contemporary cuneiform script proclaiming Cyrus as legitimate king of Babylon, in the British Museum. BELOW: Tablet with Cuneiform Inscription, between circa 1875 and circa 1840 B.C.

<span class="image_credit">Los Angeles County Museum of Art.</span>


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<h1 class="title contenteditable">New evidence of 6,000-year-old writing style found in Iraq</h1>

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Smithsonian.com, adapted by Newsela staff
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Word Count <strong>796</strong>
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<p data-paragraph-index="0">The Epic of Gilgamesh is a poem that was written down about 4,000 years ago on clay tablets, and is the oldest surviving work of literature. Recently, 22 new lines from this poem were found on pieces of tablets in Iraq. The poem was written in cuneiform, an ancient writing system. Cuneiform is one of the world’s first examples of handwriting.&nbsp;</p>
<p data-paragraph-index="1">Cuneiform was invented about 6,000 years ago by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia, now southern Iraq. It was most often written on clay tablets a few inches square and an inch high. Clay was an ideal writing surface, and some of it has survived for 6,000 years. Other writing surfaces like parchment, paper, and papyrus fall apart easily.&nbsp;</p>
<h2>Cuneiform Made Up Of 'Wedge-Shaped' Symbols</h2>
<p data-paragraph-index="2">The word cuneiform means "wedge-shaped," and the Greeks came up with this term because the signs looked like wedges, or triangles, to them. Cuneiform was used to write at least a dozen languages. In the same way, the alphabet you are reading now is used in many languages, from Spanish to German.&nbsp;</p>
<p data-paragraph-index="3">Cuneiform looks like a series of lines and triangles. Each sign is made of marks — triangular, vertical, diagonal, and horizontal. These marks were pressed into wet clay using a stylus, a long thin instrument similar to a pen. Cuneiform was often tiny, and its marks were as small as the writing on a dime. We still don’t know why it was so tiny.&nbsp;</p>
<p data-paragraph-index="4"><img alt="" src="https://d284gedng9vuu0.cloudfront.net/article_media/extra/Tablet_Cuneiform_Inscription.jpg"></p>
<p data-paragraph-index="5">The roots of cuneiform are in tokens that Sumerians used to share information. For example, they would take a stone and use it to stand for something else, perhaps a sheep. Ten stones might stand for 10 sheep. When buying or selling sheep or other goods, these stones could be put in a container and used as a kind of receipt.&nbsp;</p>
<h2>Sumerians Made Cuneiform More Abstract</h2>
<p data-paragraph-index="6">By the 4th century B.C., the Sumerians had made this system more efficient. Instead of stone tokens in cloth bags, they wrote signs on the outside of clay containers. You could "read" the container to figure out what was inside.&nbsp;</p>
<p data-paragraph-index="7">Gradually, the Sumerians developed symbols for words. At first, the symbols stood for one thing only; for example, a picture of a sheep really meant a sheep. Then the system became more abstract, and symbols were developed for ideas such as God or women. Cuneiform evolved from a way to track and store information into a way to explain the world through symbols.&nbsp;</p>
<p data-paragraph-index="8">Over the centuries, the marks became more abstract. The symbols didn’t look anything like what they represented. (Think about the letters s-h-e-e-p. They don’t look at all like a four-legged animal.) Cuneiform began to look like triangular wedge shapes.&nbsp;</p>
<p data-paragraph-index="9">Using fewer marks made the system easier to learn and more efficient. Cuneiform also became more complex as society became more complex. Writing developed as a way to keep better records, not for artistic or religious reasons. It is likely cuneiform was first used for accounting, keeping track of money and trade. In fact, about 75 percent of the cuneiform that has been recovered and translated contains this type of information.&nbsp;</p>
<h2>Rawlinson Translated Cuneiform</h2>
<p data-paragraph-index="10">The story of how cuneiform was first translated is spectacular. Cuneiform was used for thousands of years in Persia, and much of it was in plain view for centuries after it has stopped being used. Still, it was not translated for almost 2,000 years, and people thought it was an impossible task.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p data-paragraph-index="11">The story begins in the 1830s, when British army officer Henry Rawlinson copied down cuneiform found on steep cliffs in Persia, now known as Iran.</p>
<p data-paragraph-index="12">Rawlinson had to climb up cliffs on a very narrow ledge in the middle of an enormous mountain in order to copy down what he saw. Rawlinson stood on the edge of the ledge and traced the cuneiform onto paper. &nbsp;</p>
<p data-paragraph-index="13">These marks had stood out in the open for 5,000 years. Rawlinson took them home and began to decode them. It took him years. Still, Rawlinson was lucky. The cliffs in Persia held the same words written three times in three different languages: Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian. Since the other languages had been translated, he was able to translate cuneiform. The inscriptions describe the life of Darius the Great, king of the Persian Empire in the 5th century B.C.</p>
<p data-paragraph-index="14">Fifteen other languages developed from cuneiform, including Old Persian. Cuneiform was taught for generations after it stopped being a common language because it was used by those who read, copied and recopied Sumerian literary works. By 1600 B.C., no Sumerian speakers were alive, but cuneiform was still used for another thousand years. Today, this ancient system may seem strangely familiar: cool, hard, palm-sized tablets, which are used for receipts, notes, messages, and even great works of literature.</p>

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