Greg Jenner is joined in ancient Mesopotamia by Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid and comedian Phil Wang to learn about the history of cuneiform, the oldest writing system in the world.In the 19th Century, European scholars began to translate inscriptions found on ruins and clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia - an area of the world between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that encompasses modern Iraq, as well as parts of Syria, Iran, Turkey and Kuwait. The script they deciphered became known as cuneiform, and this distinctive wedge-shaped writing system is perhaps the oldest in the world. The earliest cuneiform tablet is in fact over 5,000 years old.These clay tablets reveal much about the daily life of people in this part of the ancient world, recording everything from the amounts of beer sold by brewers and the best way to ask the gods for advice, to squabbles between husbands and wives and even the lullabies used to get babies to sleep. The first recorded epic poem, The Epic of Gilgamesh, is also preserved thanks to cuneiform. This episode traces the history of cuneiform, exploring how this script worked, who used it and what they used it for, what it tells us about the inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia, and how it was finally deciphered.If you’re a fan of historical puzzles, amazing archaeological finds and the intimate details of everyday life in the ancient world, you’ll love our episode on cuneiform.If you want more from Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid, check out our episode on Ancient Babylon. And for more ancient history with Phil Wang, listen to our episodes on the history of Kung Fu and the Terracotta Warriors. You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Hannah Cusworth and Matt Ryan Written by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Ben Hollands Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: James Cook
Chapter 1: What is cuneiform and who were its early users?
And to help us decipher the ancient story, we have two very special guests. In History Corner, she's an honorary fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. She's an Assyriologist who researches and teaches on the history of Mesopotamia, Cuneiform and the Akkadian language. She has a wonderful brand new book that I loved called Between Two Rivers, Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History.
I highly recommend it. And you will remember her from our episode on the ancient Babylonians. It's Dr. Moody Al-Rashid. Welcome, Moody. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Delighted to have you back. And in Comedy Corner, he's a fantastic comedian, actor and author. You'll know him from Dastmaster, Live at the Apollo. Have a news for you from his two Netflix comedy specials.
Two, count them. Maybe you've read his side-splitting book, Sidesplitter, which I loved on audiobook. But you'll definitely remember him from our previous episodes of You're Dead to Me. Most recently on the Terracotta Warriors and the History of Kung Fu, which sounds like a film title but isn't. Returning for a triumphant fifth appearance in...
It's Phil Wang. Welcome back again. Hello. Thanks for having me. Yes, Moody is an Assyriologist. I'm Assyriologist. Hey! In Comedy Corner. Bring in the silly, baby.
Phil, together we've tackled mighty military matters. We've done the Borgias. We've done Genghis Khan. We've done the Terracotta Warriors and Kung Fu. Today we're going quite nerdy. What does the word cuneiform mean to you? Spiritually. Emotionally.
I picture triangles. Yeah. So carved triangles, a lot of grain, barley, the sort of the recording of barley. That's fairly good knowledge straight off the bat. And the biggest word in my, one of those diagrams called the word bubbles, the word cloud. Oh yeah, word cloud. The biggest word there is old. That's my, that's my header. Am I on the right ballpark?
I mean, Moody, I don't want to give him too many sort of stars early on, but I feel that was quite good.
That's pretty spot on. Yeah.
And the font for old is just like a really big font.
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Chapter 2: How was cuneiform deciphered in the 19th century?
That's what I actually wanted to say, but I thought I wasn't allowed to say that.
It's usually an Englishman or Frenchman, in fairness, in this period in history. Moody, what was an Englishman doing in Iran? Was he doing a classic bit of Empire? Hello, I've just come to do a bit of Empire.
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.
So he was invited in by the Shah of Persia.
Bizarrely. A rare thing.
Normally it's a sort of invasion thing. So that's quite nice. They actually said, welcome, please. Phil, the study of languages is called philology.
Is it?
And your name is Phil. Yeah. I feel like therefore you have an innate skill in this.
An innate interest in this. Yeah. I wish I did. No, I do have an interest in it. I want me to say I wish I had a skill in it. Okay. Yeah. All right. But I do not know that. Okay.
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Chapter 3: Who were the key figures in deciphering cuneiform?
And Akkadian, yeah. He wants to cover all the bases, I guess. Make sure everyone could see what he did.
Okay. And Henry Rawlinson decoded it with help. Yes.
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.
It's like on a cliff or something. It's like really high up.
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.
Of course he did. Yes.
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.
You've already qualified that he wasn't necessarily the sole most important man in this story. So who else should be added to the checklist?
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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Chapter 4: What was the significance of the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal?
OK. Phil, how do you think the competition was judged? What kind of... Talk me through the rounds.
Oh, man. Like a kind of spelling bee. Nice. Like a cuneiform spelling bee. And he's like, spell corn. Yeah. And Rollins and Hinks had to stand there and go, triangle, triangle pointing to the top left, triangle pointing to the top right. Is it something like that? I think that's great.
I like that.
I like that too. I wish they did that. Yeah.
How did this competition work? Is it live translation spelling bee, as Phil has suggested, which I'd love to see.
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.
So they all win. Yes. Yes, yes.
Oh, that's nice.
Yeah. Bit of a cop-out.
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Chapter 5: How does cuneiform compare to other ancient writing systems?
Really?
Play tablets, yeah.
Wow. So this is from about 650 BCE. So it's very late in the grand sweep of Mesopotamian history, but it is earlier than, like, it's earlier than Socrates.
Mm-hmm.
So, you know, when we say ancient, it's ancient, but it's really late in...
In cuneiform. In cuneiform, right. Yeah.
So it's kind of, I'm doing, I'm slightly struggling to work out how to frame that. But yeah, we've got Ashurbanipal. I like to call him Ashurbanishampal. I don't know why. I always imagine him in my head.
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.
I'm going to have to say it again just to make sure people understand, but this is a Neo-Assyrian king saying, this stuff belongs in a museum. It's 2,500 years old. So it's an ancient person going, this is archaeology.
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Chapter 6: Why was clay chosen as the medium for cuneiform tablets?
It's cuneiform week here at the tent.
OK, so we know how cuneiform was deciphered and we know how it was preserved. The library burned down baking the knowledge, which is extraordinary. Let's now discover how cuneiform was first invented. Phil, you've already mentioned the alphabets. We know it has letters in it. Cuneiform isn't phonetic.
But in the very, very, very late old Persian, there was a tiny element of phonetic in there, a little bit, a little bit alphabetic, a little bit. That's right. So just right at the end, it changed a tiny bit. But the system is not phonetic. Is that right?
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.
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.
And that enabled the writing system to take on completely unrelated languages to the ones that those initial words were in.
How many characters are there in cuneiform? If you were to be a scribe and train, how many would you have to learn?
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.
Was it a cumulative script? So they started off with some characters and as time progressed, they just created more and more characters in cuneiform to represent new things?
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Chapter 7: Who could read and write cuneiform in ancient Mesopotamia?
It's almost like a comic book. There are squares. It's sort of a grid pattern, and within each grid are a collection of symbols. Like the top left, there's two circles and then what looks like a sailboat. And then below that is more circles. Lost circles. Not so many triangles, actually. Lost circles and what looks like a fish. And under that, three circles and what looks like a river.
I feel like I'm picking out a theme here. I'm going to say this is a tablet about... A fisherman. He's caught 60 fish. Three from the river. This is live philology. There's something here that looks a bit like a harp and some reeds. So he plays music in his spare time. He practices in the reed garden. Is it a dating profile? Is this Hinge?
Tinder, yeah.
Yeah, there's something here about how he doesn't like pineapple on pizza. Loves long walks in the rain. Yeah, yeah. Wait, there's lots of circles. Is that counting? That's exactly right.
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.
Well, yeah. I'm sort of using a lot of my knowledge of Chinese writing forms. Because counting in Chinese, one, two, three, one is one line, two is two lines, three is three lines. And then after that I go, this is not sustainable. And then it becomes.
more complicated characters but for those first three it is just like just marking yeah just marking but that was some very good philology phil well done oh thanks i feel like you really like you've just brought the level of the podcast up there i think everyone's very impressed um you know we're now talking about a technology that's 5350 years old the obvious question is why clay why you know the why is clay the technology
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.
And since it was everywhere, they thought, let's just try this.
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