cuneiform

     

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Trivia about cuneiform

  • The Hittite language was written in this wedge-shaped system
  • Sumerians scratched this writing system into stone & wax in addition to clay tablets
  • The "Rosetta Stone" for this writing system was the "Behistun Inscription" found in Iran
  • Dating from around 3000 B.C., the Sumerians used this writing system seen here
  • The earliest scribes in Egypt wrote in hieroglyphics & those in Babylon wrote in this style
  • Around 1620 Pietro Della Valle brought to Europe a copy of this script from Behistun in Mesopotamia
  • About 3000 B.S. the Sumerians invented this writing system which used triangular marks
  • From the Latin for "wedge", it means wedge-shaped writing & we're not just Babylon
  • Georg Grotefend bet some drinking companions that he could decipher this wedge-shaped system of writing, & did in 1802
  • G.F. Grotefend and Sir Henry Rawlinson helped decipher forms of this wedge-shaped Sumerian writing
  • The oldest artifact in D.C.'s Newseum is a 3,200-year-old Sumerian brick that spread the news using this writing system
  • The Hittites borrowed this wedgy alphabetic system from the Babylonians; hope they gave it back
  • To read the Code of Hammurabi in its original script, you have to know how to read this
  • The foot contains wedge-shaped bones that share a name with this ancient Middle Eastern writing system
  • Transcribed in the 1800s, the Behistun Inscription is the Rosetta Stone for this type of writing developed in Mesopotamia

Found pages about cuneiform