The Spread of ‘Heavenly Writing’

• Main Author: Marina ZORMAN
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani (Ljubljana University Press, Faculty of Arts) 2014-12-01
• Series: Acta Linguistica Asiatica
• Subjects: cuneiform; writing; writing systems; history of writing; writing in Mesopotamia. Ključne besede: klinopis; pisava; vrste pisav; razvoj pisave; pisava v Mezopotamiji
• Online Access: http://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/ala/article/view/2602

Cuneiform is the name of various writing systems in use throughout the Middle East from the end of the fourth millennium BCE until the late first century CE. The wedge-shaped writing was used to write ten to fifteen languages from various language families: Sumerian, Elamite, Eblaite, Old Assyrian, Old Babylonian and other Akkadian dialects, Proto-Hattic, Hittite, Luwian, Palaic, Hurrian, Urartian, Ugaritic, Old Persian etc. Over the centuries it evolved from a pictographic to a syllabographic writing system and eventually became an alphabetic script, but most languages used a 'mixed orthography' which combined ideographic and phonetic elements, and required a rebus principle of reading.