Cuneiform Writing

System which originated in Chaldea and spread to As syria, Persia, and other countries and races bordering on the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. It was conse IMG:content-1052.png:[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small] wedge-shaped lines, whence the name; but the oldest characters are made with straight lines. Clay was the material most used as a surface, and the use of this material perhaps explains the wedge shape of the lines, as resulting from the impre ions of a stylus made for the purpose. The clay was subsequently baked. Small pillow-shaped tablets were used for contracts, letters, etc. Larger barrel-shaped clay cylinders, and also eight sided bricks, were used for books and larger inscriptions. The most important literature in this writing is that of the Chaldeans and A yrians, consisting of historic records, religious myths and traditions, invocations, prayers, and works on various branches of knowledge. The language of the most ancient Chaldeans (Accadians), is being deciphered by the aid of A yrian dictionaries or word lists. A yrian was again deciphered through Persian inscriptions repeating the same matter (see BEHISTUN) and by means of Hebrew and Arab, to which A yrian is cognate. Thus the Persian cuneiform inscriptions were the ones first read, and these not until after 1830. The deciphering of the characters was begun by the German Grotefend in 1802, by a system of shrewd gue es as to names of certain Persian kings, like Darius and Xerxes, these gue es being based on the regular recurrence of the characters for these names and other known historic facts about the inscriptions. The characters are partly alphabetic, partly syllabic, and partly IMG:content-1053.png:[blocks in formation] 1, sun, 3, star, drawn on papyrus; 2, 5, sun, 4, 6, star, pre ed in clay. ideographic. They were originally all pictorial, but, being made on clay, were nece arily simplified and conventionalized, so that the original form of many of them is uncertain. These studies have been pursued with most succe by Hebrew scholars, on account of the affinities of Hebrew and A yrian. The finest collection of cuneiform inscriptions in this country is in the Univ. Pa. Museum.