Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid
Appearances
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
And that's why it took its name from it.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Yes. King Ashurbanipal wanted to create this royal library, and he sent scholars to different parts of the empire to copy the most well-known and important texts, including some very old ones, like the Epic of Gilgamesh, and brought them under one roof, so to speak. It gets its name as a royal library because the types of disciplines attested, the types of works attested are just so incredible.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
You have astronomy, medicine, literature, omens. It's just such a vast, such a vast collection.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
In cuneiform. In cuneiform, right. Yeah.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Yes, yes. So Ashurbanipal is an interesting guy. I mean, he has these reliefs of himself doing things like fighting lions or, you know, throwing spears. And then he has these styluses tucked into his belt as if to make sure everyone knew, not just a warrior. I'm not just protecting my kingdom. I'm also really smart. I know math. I know science. I know how to read.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Yes, yeah. It's quite a stable script. I mean, the styles change and you can sort of tell when something's really old.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
They did bake some tablets that were really important, but for the most part they just let them dry.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Not an alphabet. That's exactly right. There was also one earlier cuneiform alphabet from Ugarit, where they were like, we are not doing this complicated thing. We're making an alphabet. Broadly, cuneiform is a mix of signs or characters that stand for whole words and characters that stand for syllables like ba instead of a B and an A or bat like B-A-T as one sound.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
That tells us a lot actually about the history of how this script develops, because initially it was just signs that stood for words. And this was in the earliest iterations. And scribes used quite innovative methods to make each sign stand for more things, more sounds that were related to its original meaning or to the original sounds that those words had.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
And that enabled the writing system to take on completely unrelated languages to the ones that those initial words were in.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
About 600 to 1,000. I mean, you probably wouldn't have to master every single one if you were just writing letters, for example. But if you were a scholar, you would probably need to do the upper limit of that.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Yeah, yeah. Right, right. And those characters also took on more meanings and sounds. So each character stands for a bunch of different things. So when you read a text, sometimes it takes a while because you're like, all right, this sign has like eight different values and you have to make like a little table with all the different values and see which ones make sense based on context.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
It actually is stolen from my husband.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Yeah, the circles are numbers. Phil, you are so good at this. You really are. If you need a plan B, we need more seriologists. We have way too many tablets.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Well, there was a lot of it. I mean, the silty kind of riverbed where the two rivers meet near the Arabian Gulf, it was quite a rich, fertile soil. For the fertility of the soil, coupled with some agricultural tech advances, made it possible for them to have so much agricultural produce and products to keep track of, which necessitated a writing system.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
And since it was everywhere, they thought, let's just try this.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
So kind of both. And the answer to that depends on the period you're talking about and also the place. So in some periods, professionals, for example, learned a basic kind of repertoire of science to be able to carry out transactions, write letters, and that included women. Overall, it was a kind of highly skilled that you needed to go through specialized training.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
And there were also different tiers that you could kind of stop at in a way.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
So some went on to become scribes and administrators and they had to just know like math for the sake of, you know, calculations and field calculations. And then others went beyond that to become, you know, medical professionals or astronomers doing much more highly specialized math, especially in the later period. So yes and no to that. Yeah.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Actually, yes. And in the first millennium BCE, so in the kind of later periods of Mesopotamian sciences, there are these phrases at the end of these science texts that basically say, do not show this to the uninitiated. Oh, really? This is the secret knowledge of the, you know, the gods. This is just for us. This is just for us. Exactly.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Yes, that's right. She's the first named author in history. So not just the first woman author, the first author of this name we know. Wow. Yeah, as a woman. And her name is Elhadwana. And she penned, penned, impressed, whatever. Yeah. The pen is fine, yeah. These incredible hymns, temple hymns, essentially.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
The texts that are attributed to her authorship come from a slightly later period, so it's not exactly straightforward, but I still think that's the coolest thing ever. That's amazing.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
I mean, you could sing them if you wanted to. I guess we don't know the tune, though. Yeah, you can make one up, I guess. We know the lyrics. We know the lyrics, yes.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Yes. Yes, absolutely. Yes, they wrote letters to each other and they sent them and they were kind of,
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
mail networks royal mail networks or speak i mean literally royal road yeah for the mail networks um and they carry clay tablets yeah they carry baskets i guess of clay tablets on you know donkey or depending on the period maybe horse but yeah for to get uh messages from one part of especially a growing empire to the other you needed to be able to communicate with your you know governors and do you write your own or do you go to the local scribe and dictate it
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
You could do both. In some periods, people wrote their own letters. They learned enough to write their own letters. But the way letters are written is they often start with, like, to so-and-so, speak, thus says another so-and-so. So there is this kind of hint that they were dictated both in the taking down of the letter, but also in the delivery of the letter as well.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, whoever needed to send a letter, not everyone would have needed to send a letter, but yeah, whoever needed to send one, they could access this.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
So there are a whole bunch of tablets that tell us stuff about beer from the earliest, earliest periods of writing. But what I think is really interesting is that one of the earliest names, at least we think it's a name and we think we're pronouncing it correctly when we say the name is Kushim. is a beer brewer.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
And this is not like, you know, someone in their basement making like a micro-brew for the neighbours on a Sunday. This is a guy who at one point was responsible for 135,000 litres of barley over the course of 37 months for the production of beer. And then in another tablet, he's responsible for nine different cereals to produce eight different kinds of beer.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
So this is part of an administrative machinery.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
To pay people, essentially, as part of their rations.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Sort of, yeah. Beer was, I mean, I don't, there's an amazing book about the history of beer by a scholar named Tate Paulette. So I hope I'm not getting this wrong, but I think it had more of the consistency of porridge. Yes, it's thick and soupy, isn't it? Exactly, it's a poker straw.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Exactly. But it was high calorie, so high energy and cleanish fluids because water wasn't always clean. So it was a really good way to pay people. And not particularly alcoholic, presumably? Probably not too alcoholic and probably not very tasty, I'm guessing.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
They were how people got paid for service in this era to the temple, usually in agricultural work. Instead of being paid in like coins, for example, which were not a thing at the time, they got paid in basically bowls of food, whether it was barley or oil or in some cases beer. So it was part of the payment system, so to speak.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Oh, no, no. I've probably read like a hundred.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Yeah, it really is extraordinary. I mean, you can get windows onto people's working lives, but you can also get windows onto what lullabies they sang to their babies or what did they write to their far-flung husbands? What did they observe in the night sky? What sort of astronomical leaps did they make? It's just so moving.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Yeah, and they were pretty good record keepers too, so it can be borderline sort of dry where you're reading about... a forestry institution in the city of Ummah and what classes of laborers were working and the familial lines and then you're just name after name after name. But you're still getting these people's names from thousands of years ago, which is pretty cool.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
But it can also be like some of the most beautiful literature that, you know, I feel like I've ever read, like the Epic of Gilgamesh. Really beautiful language and poetry and storytelling.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. They did write about barley too, but they also shouted at each other a little bit.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Inaya, he's the husband and he's living in Anatolia, which is what is now Turkey, where there's a major trading hub, like an international trading hub called Kanish. And he moved there essentially to handle trade. And then his wife, Taram Kugbi, is in the heartland of Assyria in the capital of Ashur. And she's writing to him quite fiery letters. And one of them reads... Right. Right.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
And the letter ends, why do you keep on listening to slander and do you keep sending me angry letters?
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
I don't know if we have his replies, but there are actually quite a few exchanges between a husband and wife in this era. This was the old Assyrian period. It's about 2000 to 1600 BCE, where many of the wives stayed behind in Ashur, made these textiles for onward sale, essentially, in Kanish, which was about five weeks away on donkey. Wow. And not exactly an untreacherous journey.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
I sort of feel like I empathize with them because these women are, like, working, and they're also looking after, like, eight children. Yeah.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Yeah, having a blast, maybe even taking a second wife.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Yeah, and there are lots and lots of tablets that tell us about every stage of scribal education. There's one house in Nippur, a city in what is now Iraq, that archaeologists have given the very kind of charming name of House F. Wow. Thanks, archaeology. That's great. Exactly. We're very excited now to hear about how stuff.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
And they found over 1,400 school texts, basically, from just in the first season that tell us about, you know, the first messy wedges that scribes were impressing as little kids. My first wedge. Yeah, my first wedge, exactly. It's like those, you know, wobbly kind of fingerprint smudged tablets. Finger space, finger space, finger space.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
But, yeah, all the way up to, you know, quite advanced math and Sumerian literature. Doing the GCSEs. Yeah, GCSEs, fake contracts, everything.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
They were, yeah. And then you also get glimpses into, like, how frustrating it might have been to be a student because there's one tablet with a bite mark in it. Amazing. Yeah, like maybe a 12-year-old.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
And then some doodles as well. There's one that's maybe of a teacher sitting in a chair holding a stick out.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Maybe, it might be. I kind of can't imagine who else the student would have... The stick suggests corporal punishment, doesn't it? There are stories about schools that the students had to write down that are in Sumerian where it gets kind of heated at times.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
So they were probably speaking Akkadian at home because by the time House F exists, Sumerian is a dead language.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
But they were learning Sumerian at school because it was important to learn this ancient, authentic old language, just like Latin was. Yeah, OK.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Yeah, there are lots actually. So it's a Semitic language. So it's related. I mean, in Iraq today, they speak, I mean, they speak lots of different languages, but they speak Arabic as well. And Arabic is also a Semitic language. So there's a lot of vocab overlap and some grammar overlap.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Yeah, I mean, I don't know, like, to what extent Aramaic borrows from Akkadian, but it was at one point simultaneous and people were bilingual in Aramaic and Akkadian. That was in the late period, wasn't it?
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Yeah. And there are even proverbs that are like, what good is a scribe who doesn't know Sumerian? And it's like, well, I guess that nobody wanted to really learn this. So they had to come up with proverbs to inspire them.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
So I think the easiest way to explain that is that in ancient Mesopotamia, supernatural things were real. The gods, goddesses, demons, ghosts, they were as part of the natural world as like a rock and a tree and a river. So they formed a kind of normal part of explanations for stuff happening in the world. So there was a really close connection between, in particular, the divine and the sciences.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
I've got bad news. They did have a workaround, though. So they would get a substitute to be in the king's place for a couple of months. And then that person would live like a king and then be killed. Oh, really? Just to be absolutely sure. They'd swap in a peasant body double. Yeah, exactly. I know, it was brutal.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
You can imagine why it was so important for the observers, for the diviners and the scholars to get the signs right, because there was a lot that rode on these signs. Things that are happening in the natural world.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
And there were entire textbooks that were filled with omens to tell people how to interpret an eclipse or the position of Jupiter in a particular constellation or what the color of Mars in the sky might have been.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
So you had to, well, among, there were a couple of different ways, but one way was to write your yes or no question. It had to be a yes or no question. It couldn't just be like, what's going to happen tomorrow? It has to be, will I recover from, you know, this journey or whatever. Yeah, they went crazy.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Everything. And they would place this tablet in front of the statue of the relevant deity, who would then presumably read the question and leave their answer, write the answer down in the entrails of the sheep, so particularly the liver. And then they would read the liver like they would read cuneiform signs, because cuneiform signs have multiple meanings, and so do…
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Yeah, so cuneiform or cuneiform are both completely fine. So it was a writing system developed just before 3000 BCE in what is now southern Iraq. And it was a script, not a language. Found mostly on clay tablets, but also on some extremely large monumental inscriptions made out of stone and some other objects as well. And it gets its name from the Latin cuneus.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
So it delivers, yeah. And the liver is even sometimes called the tablet of the gods, where the gods leave their messages. Yeah, so writing was kind of, it permeated their entire world. Wow. And astronomical phenomena were also the writing, the heavenly writing, is the movement of the planets.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
That's exactly right. The last datable cuneiform tablet, so datable, is from 79 or 80 CE.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Move on. And what I love is it's also from Uruk. Yeah. So it started in Uruk, and I mean, we don't know. Oh, the last one was also from Uruk.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
It's not bad, yeah. It is a big T, but it's only about this big.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Yeah, and it's like a 3D cross, basically. So it has like 12 sides, I don't know, I can't do math, but it's something like that.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Exactly. Right. It's an ancient fake. Yeah. So a bunch of priests in the sixth, I think it's the sixth century or the 600s BCE. I'm actually surprisingly bad at dates, but they made this 3D cross shaped document, populated it with old looking signs. That is a font not known from any other period. So they completely made this up.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
And it pretends to be from the era of Manishtushu, who was about almost 2000 years before, who was one of Sargon the Great's descendants. And they are basically saying we've been priests have been here since this time. So please keep paying us.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Well, it's just, yeah, it's just the random sheep.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
I don't know any Latin, but I know cuneus in Latin, which means wedge. So because they get impressed into clay, they have this characteristic wedge or triangular shape. And funnily enough, in Akkadian, the word for cuneiform is sataku or santaku, which means triangle. Oh, wow.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
I probably should have said that. All my dates are in B.C.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
And it's describing basically the roles of these priests and how long it's been established for. And so they presumably did that to justify their profession, make it more authoritative and authentic.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
In 592 BCE, a young woman, or maybe even still a girl, named Laa Tubashini was sold into slavery by marriage by her adoptive mother, Hamaya. This marriage was financed by a third party, presumably to secure access to the children who would be born of the forced union and who would have had the same legal status as their mother.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
It's a harrowing story, but remarkably, around 560 BCE, Laa to Bashini was emancipated from her slave status, and her first official act as a freedwoman was to fight for the freedom of her children. On 29 October 560 BCE, the Babylonian courts heard her lawsuit against members of the incredibly powerful and wealthy family who had financed the arrangement in the first place.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
She argued before a minister and the king's judges that, like her, her children should also be freed. Five clay tablets that span three decades tell her story. And even if the nature of the legal sources lack the color of a literary work, they tell us a lot about her courage.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
They tell us that she survived her decades-long ordeal as an enslaved woman forced into marriage, at least six pregnancies and births without the benefit of anesthesia or antibiotics, and far more that has lost its time. And they tell us that she survived all this a fighter, willing to take on a powerful family and argue before the king's judges for the freedom of her children.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
In the end, she only succeeded in freeing one son, a boy named Ardia. Among many things, what moves me about her story is just what we can learn from cuneiform. This writing system preserves so much of life from ancient Mesopotamia as we've talked about. Receipts, lullabies, literature, letters, liver omens, astronomical leaps, and also the lives of women like La Tubashini and her six children.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Her story is a reminder that people in the ancient past were no less human, no less loving or brave and no more immune to pain than we are. And neither is any person today who seems too different to have anything in common with. They were not the other and neither are any of us from each other.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
And funnily enough, in Arabic, it's mismari, which means nail imprint. So they kind of also went with the visuals. Like fingernail. Like a nail. Hammer and nail. Yeah. Okay.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Lots and lots of different people used cuneiform to write lots of different languages. But it's the writing system that is used in the region that we call ancient Mesopotamia between the Tigris and around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and what is now Iraq and Syria and some of the neighboring countries as well.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
The oldest tablets come specifically from Uruk in southern Iraq, and those date to about 3350 BCE. This kind of still called proto-cuneiform is like really, really early stage. They don't look like triangles yet.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
They're actually a more complicated shape because they look like the things that they represent. So they look like pictures, basically. Yeah, those are my favorite ones. They're so pretty.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Exactly. Various empires rose and fell in this region. We had the Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians before them, the Sumerians. And then the neighboring Elamites, Hittites, and eventually the Persians. And they all used some variation of cuneiform for their many languages. The main two languages, however, in ancient Mesopotamia were Sumerian and Akkadian.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Exactly. Kineiform is the writing system, just like we use Latin script to write stuff in English, French, German. It's used for multiple languages with some variations. Same with Kineiform.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Basically, yes. He was an officer of the British East India Company. And he was originally sent to India. And then he went to Iran after that to help the Shah, I think, reorganize his army or something like that. And he fell in love with ancient Persian monuments and culture.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
I feel like I should just maybe just get a cup of coffee or something. Thanks, Moody.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
He actually exactly did that. Yeah, he and a bunch of other philologists basically looked for patterns in these trilingual inscriptions that were in various places in Iran, namely Persepolis, but also some big ones on Mount Alvand, and then the big kind of Rosetta Stone of Assyriology, which is the Behistun inscription.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
They first found royal names, and then from there they found the word for of, kind of unexciting, but very important. Of? Of, yeah, Annam. Really? Yeah, that was like the first.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
It really is, yeah. I mean, it appears so many times, so it kind of helps you orient words in relation to each other as well. So there's a pattern there. He was kind of played, in my view, a more minor role because a lot of work was already done by the time he got to the Behistun inscription by other philologists. Oh, really? A lot of copies were made. A lot of kind of words were decoded.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
How dare you? I'm just saying what happened.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
I think it became a more kind of famous and sensationalized one. And therefore it became kind of central to all the stories about decipherment that came out of this period of history. But a lot of work was already done by the time Behistun was decoded. So I would say it kind of helped confirm things.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Yeah, it's a trilingual inscription, but all using cuneiform. So it's three cuneiform inscriptions in these like almost like caption boxes, but they're different languages recorded. One of the languages was known, Old Persian. People knew how to read Old Persian from other texts that were not written in cuneiform. So they kind of knew what it might say.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
And then they kind of overlaid that onto the cuneiform.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
And Akkadian, yeah. He wants to cover all the bases, I guess. Make sure everyone could see what he did.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
So he, I think, initially tried to, because it's very high up and it's not easily accessible. So they had to use pulleys and levers. Because it's up on like a rock.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Exactly. And very bright as well, because the sun sort of hits it as you're looking at it. And Rawlinson has been credited with scaling the rocks to make the drawings, but he actually sent a few boys to do it for him.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
You there, boy! Yes, exactly. You climb this instead of me and make the copy, and then I will do the kind of intellectual work to decode it. And he ended up publishing that in 1847, and he was just 37 years old.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Yeah, I mean, there were a couple of others who worked on this at the same time, but I would say Edward Hinks is one of the unsung heroes of this entire story. He was an Irish, I don't know how to say this word, clergyman? Clergyman. Clergyman. This happened when I was recording my book. I was like, I can't pronounce anything.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
I know what all these words mean and I've used them hundreds of times, but I can't actually say them out loud. So he was an Irish clergyman.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
He did something really remarkable, which is he matched up the letters or the sorry, the characters that were used in the monumental inscriptions, which he called lapidary, which is a kind of formal font, let's say, to the characters used in the clay tablet, which is a little bit messier, which he called cursive. And that unlocked thousands and thousands more texts.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Pretty much, yeah. He complained when the British Museum hired Hinks for a period of time. I can't remember how long it was. Like a year or something, wasn't it? Yeah, exactly. He complained then, and he tried to suppress Hinks's work, which is not exactly in the spirit of sort of scholarly cooperation, but here we are.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Well, they held a competition. We're talking about competition, yeah.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
I like that too. I wish they did that. Yeah.
You're Dead to Me
Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
I would also love to see that. So the society invited four people to submit sealed translations of a particular cuneiform inscription that was an Assyrian one. So it was Horace and Hinks and two others, Henry Fox Talbot and Jules Aupert. And they all sent in similar results. So basic decipherment had been achieved by then. And that's when the discipline of Assyriology takes off. I see.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
Yes. Assyriology. Assyriology. The way I try to explain it is in the same way that Egyptology studies ancient Egypt, Assyriology studies ancient Assyria and the other civilizations that existed in Mesopotamia.
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Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system
But they've kind of focused on Assyria because around the time of the beginning of this discipline, an incredible royal library was uncovered from Nineveh, which was the royal library of the last great Neo-Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal. And there were about 30,000 tablets that were unearthed from that. So I think that really, you know, that was the kind of game changer for the field.