What was the Sumerians alphabet called?
CuneiformCuneiformTrilingual cuneiform inscription of Xerxes I at Van Fortress in Turkey, written in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian forms of cuneiformScript typeLogographic and syllabaryCreatedaround 3200 B.C.Time periodc. 31st century BC to c. 2nd century AD11 more rows
How many letters are in the Sumerian alphabet?
Cuneiform is not a language The cuneiform writing system is also not an alphabet, and it doesn't have letters. Instead it used between 600 and 1,000 characters to write words (or parts of them) or syllables (or parts of them).
How do you say hello in Sumerian?
0:001:31Conversational Sumerian Lesson 1: Greetings & Introductions - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipSo the first word we're going to learn today is selim selim selim means hello literally CillianMoreSo the first word we're going to learn today is selim selim selim means hello literally Cillian means health. So when you say hello to someone in Sumerian you're wishing them good health.
How did the Sumerians write?
The Sumerian invention of cuneiform—a Latin term literally meaning “wedge-shaped”— dates to sometime around 3400 B.C. In its most sophisticated form, it consisted of several hundred characters that ancient scribes used to write words or syllables on wet clay tablets with a reed stylus.
What language is closest to Sumerian?
In terms of structure, Sumerian is much closer to American Indian languages, for instance, than it is to Akkadian. Modern languages that structurally resemble Sumerian – though they are not related at all and have no cognates in common – include Japanese, Turkish, Finnish and Hungarian.
What is the oldest written word?
Mother, bark and spit are just three of 23 words that researchers believe date back 15,000 years, making them the oldest known words.
Does anyone still speak Sumerian?
Still Spoken: No Eventually, Sumerian was replaced by Akkadian as the commonly spoken language in southern Mesopotamia (c. 2000 BCE).
Is Sumerian Turkish?
According to the historians referring to these similar language facts, Sumerian is an ancient Turkish language.
Can Sumerian be spoken?
Sumerian is the oldest language that we can read that has come to us from antiquity, with clay tablets surviving from as far back as roughly 3200 BCE. As a spoken language, it likely died out around the middle of the second millennium, but continued to be used as a literary language for at least another 900 years.
What race were Sumerians?
OriginsMost historians have suggested that Sumer was first permanently settled between c. ... Others have suggested that the Sumerians were a North African people who migrated from the Green Sahara into the Middle East and were responsible for the spread of farming in the Middle East.More items...
Is Sumeria in the Bible?
The only reference to Sumer in the Bible is to `the Land of Shinar' (Genesis 10:10 and elsewhere), which people interpreted to most likely mean the land surrounding Babylon, until the Assyriologist Jules Oppert (1825-1905 CE) identified the biblical reference with the region of southern Mesopotamia known as Sumer and, ...
Is Sumerian the oldest language?
Most experts agree that Sumerian is the oldest known written language. A limestone tablet found at the ancient Sumerian city of Kish. A plaster cast of the Kish Tablet is inscribed with proto-cuneiform signs and is displayed in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum.
What is the Sumerian variety?
The standard variety of Sumerian was Emegir ( 𒅴𒂠 eme-gir₁₅). A notable variety or sociolect was Emesal ( 𒅴𒊩 eme-sal), possibly to be interpreted as "fine tongue" or "high-pitched voice" ( Rubio 2007, p. 1369). Other terms for dialects or registers were eme-galam "high tongue", eme-si-sa "straight tongue", eme-te-na "oblique [?] tongue", etc.
What is Sumer's language called?
The language was called "Scythic" by some, and, confusingly, "Akkadian" by others. In 1869, Oppert proposed the name "Sumerian", based on the known title "King of Sumer and Akkad", reasoning that if Akkad signified the Semitic portion of the kingdom, Sumer might describe the non-Semitic annex.
What is a cuneiform sign?
Depending on the context, a cuneiform sign can be read either as one of several possible logograms, each of which corresponds to a word in the Sumerian spoken language, as a phonetic syllable (V, VC, CV, or CVC), or as a determinative (a marker of semantic category, such as occupation or place).
Why is Sumerian research so difficult?
Ever since its decipherment, research of Sumerian has been made difficult not only by the lack of any native speakers, but also by the relative sparseness of linguistic data , the apparent lack of a closely related language, and the features of the writing system.
Why is Sumerian phonology incomplete?
Modern knowledge of Sumerian phonology is flawed and incomplete because of the lack of native speakers, the transmission through the filter of Akkadian phonology and the difficulties posed by the cuneiform script. As I. M. Diakonoff observes, "when we try to find out the morphophonological structure of the Sumerian language, we must constantly bear in mind that we are not dealing with a language directly but are reconstructing it from a very imperfect mnemonic writing system which had not been basically aimed at the rendering of morphophonemics".
How many signs are there in Sumerian?
Rosengarten (1967) lists 468 signs used in Sumerian (pre- Sargonian) Lagash. The pre-Sargonian period of the 26th to 24th centuries BC is the "Classical Sumerian" stage of the language. The cuneiform script was adapted to Akkadian writing beginning in the mid-third millennium.
When did Sumerian replace Akkadian?
Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language around 2000 BC (the exact dating being subject to debate), but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language in Akkadian-speaking Mesopotamian states such as Assyria and Babylonia until the 1st century AD.
What are some of the most famous texts written in the Sumerian period?
Some famous texts either initially written in this period or copied from an earlier period include the Sumerian King List, Lamentation of Ur, Inanna 's Descent into the Underworld , and the hero myths of Enmerkar, Lugalbanda , and Gilgamesh.
What is the writing system of Sumerian?
The writing system of Sumerian has the principles of polyphony and homophony. Polyphony means that some signs have multiple syllabic values, for instance the DU sign could be read either 'du', 'ra 2 ', 'ša 4 ', etc., each having different but often related meanings. Homophony means that there are multiple signs having the same syllabic value. You may have noticed the use of subscripts ( 2) in the sign values. This is because syllables like 'ra' had multiple sign renderings like RA , the aforementioned DU, and others. Incredibly, some syllables had more than 10 different signs representing them.
What happened after the Sumerian period?
After this period ending c. 1595 BCE, the scribal usage of Sumerian decreased significantly. The repertoire of texts was reduced, particularly the royal/divine hymns of the Ur III period, and even the ones that continued were written only in bilingual renditions with Akkadian and other languages.
What is the Sumerian language?
The Sumerian language was spoken in southern Mesopotamia before the 2nd millennium BCE and was the first language to be written in the cuneiform script. It is an isolate language meaning we know of no other languages that relate to it ancestrally.
What language did the Scribes use?
Scribes were centrally trained in Agade and then sent out to help conduct the affairs of every part of the realm, but they used Akkadian as their language, giving Sumerian a backseat. Even so, there were still local towns using Sumerian writing to run the local administration.
When was Sumerian written?
The first instance of the language in writing is from a group of texts dating to the Uruk IV period (c. 3200 BCE). Most of these are administrative texts, but some are wordlists used for scribal education. It has been challenged that these texts are indeed Sumerian, due to the fact that ideograms abound, which can be read in any language. For instance, three strokes along with a depiction of an ox could be read as “three oxen” in English, “drei Ochsen” in German, “tres bueyes” in Spanish, etc. The meaning of the writing would not change. However, the presence of phonetic complements as well as phonetic spellings that cue the reader to an actual pronunciation makes it almost certain that the language was indeed Sumerian. Around 400 years later, the next group of texts we have come from Ur c. 2800 BCE. Again, these are mostly administrative texts together with a number of wordlists for scribal education.
Where was Sumerian spoken?
The Sumerian language was spoken in southern Mesopotamia before the 2nd millennium BCE and was the first language to be written in the cuneiform script. It is an isolate language meaning we know of no other languages that relate to it ancestrally. Although there are some theories that Sumerian is a member of the Uralic languages like Hungarian ...
What was Sumerian written on?
Sumerian was written on clay tablets TT and other durable materials such as stone using the cuneiform script. Many of the earliest signs were pictorial in nature ( Image 1) but they gradually developed more stylised and linear forms ( Image 2 ).
Where did Sumerian texts come from?
Most of the Sumerian texts from the Neo-Assyrian period come from the cities of Assur PGP , the religious capital of Assyria, and from Nineveh PGP , the site of the famous library of king Assurbanipal PGP . Excavations in the city of Kalhu have also uncovered numerous bilingual tablets which were once housed in Ezida, ...
What language was Sumerian adapted for?
Eventually, the cuneiform script which had been developed for Sumerian was adapted for Akkadian, a Semitic language TT also spoken in Mesopotamia but linguistically unrelated to Sumerian. The two languages were used side by side until Sumerian died out as a mother tongue, sometime around 2000 BC (the exact date remains the subject of much debate). However, this did not spell the end of Sumerian. Its influence on Akkadian remained visible in Sumerian loanwords and certain grammatical features as well as in the logograms (or "Sumerograms") which had originated as Sumerian cuneiform signs. This was especially true in the Neo-Assyrian TT period, when the use of logograms as opposed to syllabic writings became a particularly popular way of showcasing one's learnedness and appreciation of cuneiform's complexity.
What is the oldest language in the world?
It therefore vies with Egyptian for the title of the oldest recorded language in the world. The word "Sumerian" derives from the Akkadian TT word šumeru; the Sumerians themselves referred to their language simply as eme-gi 7 ("native tongue"). Sumerian was written on clay tablets TT and other durable materials such as stone using ...
What language was spoken in Mesopotamia?
The Sumerian language. Sumerian is the earliest documented language in Mesopotamia, and perhaps the world. Long after it ceased to be spoken as a mother tongue, knowledge of it continued to be maintained as a prestigious part of Mesopotamian scholarship until the death of cuneiform writing some two thousand years later.
What is the role of Akkadian in Sumerian?
By the first millennium BC, compositions only in Sumerian had become fairly rare, probably reflecting the crucial role which Akkadian played in providing access to Sumerian. Such monolingual texts tend to record incantations TT used in religious rituals TT . Much more common were bilingual compositions featuring both languages, whether in separate columns or with the Akkadian translation inserted into the body of the Sumerian text to provide a line-by-line translation (see Image 3 ).
What is Sumerian in Kalhu?
In Kalhu itself, Sumerian featured in the scholarly works kept in Nabu's temple .The included Sumerian and bilingual prayers and incantations, cultic hymns, and lexical lists, as well as literary compositions about the hero god Ninurta.
How did Sumerian writing begin?
First signs of Sumerian writing arranged vertically from top to bottom. Then the scribes began to build them horizontally, which greatly accelerated the process of putting the signs on wet clay. Sumerian cuneiform were adopted by other people living in Mesopotamia. Cuneiform writing in Mesopotamia were used almost 3000 years.
What did Sumerians do?
Sumerians showed amazing thrust to scientific knowledge, becoming the first mathematicians and astronomers of antiquity, and their achievement in geography, physics, chemistry, medicine, history, philology, military and agriculture amaze modern scientists.
What did the Sumerians do to make the soil rich?
Thanks to the work of many generations of the Sumerians, they managed to turn this inhospitable plain soil into a lush garden, being one of the richest countries of the ancient world. From the mainstream of the Euphrates Sumerians took network of canals and built a system of dams and dikes.
What is the most ancient invention of writing?
Pictography – ancient writings with drawings. Scientists believe the most ancient invention of writing is being contributed by Sumerians in the history of world culture. In the ancient Near East, long before the cuneiform writing even long before the Sumerians, existed a way to store and transmit information.
What did the Greeks call Mesopotamia?
We call them Sumerians, even though it is not really clear by that time if they spoke Sumerian at all. They called themselves “black-headed”. It was one of the most mysterious people in history.
When was cuneiform writing used?
Cuneiform writing in Mesopotamia were used almost 3000 years. But then it was forgotten. Cuneiform writing kept its secret through tens of centuries, more precisely, until 1835 when G. Rawlinson British officer and lover of antiquities did not decipher it.
What did people draw in the early days?
First, people drew pictures of animals or objects that had to count on wet clay tablets with chopsticks. This image has been simplified. Gradually, it became so conditioned that turned into a sign.
What Script Is On the Sumerian Tablets?
The Sumerian script is known as cuneiform, which, incidentally, is a relatively modern term originating from the early 18 th century. This word is derived from Latin and Middle French roots and means ‘wedge-shaped’. This is an apt description of the script, as it is easily recognized thanks to its wedge-shaped characters.
Where did the Sumerian language originate?
This language emerged in the Sumerian civilization , which was based in southern Mesopotamia (modern day southern Iraq ), and was first attested around 3100 BC. In the millennium that followed, ...
Why did Sumerians use the cuneiform script?
Although the cuneiform script was initially developed for economic purposes, the Sumerians soon used it for other purposes as well. This is perhaps best reflected in the increasing complexity of the script over the course of time. When the cuneiform script was fully developed, it was not only able to represent objects and numbers, but a variety of linguistic elements as well.
How did Sumerians replace the clay tokens?
As time went by, the Sumerians realized that they could replace the tokens by writing into the clay themselves, which would have been much easier. Over time, the symbols were stylized, simplifying the writing process and resulting in the birth of cuneiform. This connection between the clay tokens and the cuneiform script was made in the 1970s by Denise Schmandt-Besserat, a French archaeologist.
What is the oldest work of literature in the world?
One well-known text recorded on Sumerian clay tablets is the Epic of Gilgamesh , considered to be the oldest work of literature in the world. The standard version of this epic was written in Akkadian, and was discovered by Hormuzd Rassam, a Turkish Assyriologist, in the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh during the middle of the 19 th century. Despite the fact that the text is incomplete, it is the fullest extant text of the epic that we have at present.
What is the oldest written language in the world?
The Sumerian language was developed in ancient Mesopotamia and is the oldest known written language. This language was written in a script known as cuneiform, which was later adapted by other languages that emerged in Mesopotamia and its neighboring regions, including Akkadian, Elamite, and Hittite.
How many poems are there in the epic of Gilgamesh?
Moreover, it is much less complete as well, consisting of five poems, namely ‘Gilgamesh and Huwawa’, ‘Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven’, ‘Gilgamesh and Agga of Kish’, ‘Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld’, and ‘The Death of Gilgamesh’. It has been speculated that these poems circulated independently, as opposed to unified text like the one discovered at Nineveh.
How many signs are there in Sumerian?
The Sumerian cuneiform script had on the order of 1,000 distinct signs (or about 1,500 if variants are included). This number was reduced to about 600 by the 24th century BC and the beginning of Akkadian records. Not all Sumerian signs are used in Akkadian texts, and not all Akkadian signs are used in Hittite.
When was the Akkadian language written?
Akkadian cuneiform was itself adapted to write the Hittite language sometime around the 17th century BC . The other languages with significant cuneiform corpora are Eblaite, Elamite, Hurrian, Luwian, and Urartian .
How many consonants are in a cuneiform script?
As used for the Sumerian language, the cuneiform script was in principle capable of distinguishing at least 16 consonants, transliterated as
Why is Cuneiform called Cuneiform?
It is named for the characteristic wedge-shaped impressions ( Latin: cuneus) which form its signs. Cuneiform originally developed to write the Sumerian language of southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq ). Along with Egyptian hieroglyphs, it is one of the earliest writing systems .
How many cuneiform tablets are there?
Between half a million and two million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000 –100,000 have been read or published. The British Museum holds the largest collection (approx. 130,000 tablets), followed by the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin, the Louvre, the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, the National Museum of Iraq, the Yale Babylonian Collection (approx. 40,000), and Penn Museum. Most of these have "lain in these collections for a century without being translated, studied or published", as there are only a few hundred qualified cuneiformists in the world.
What is cuneiform script?
Cuneiform is a logo - syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era.
What languages have cuneiforms?
The other languages with significant cuneiform corpora are Eblaite, Elamite, Hurrian, Luwian, and Urartian . The latest known date for a cuneiform tablet is 75 AD. The modern study of cuneiform writing begins with its decipherment in the mid-19th century, and belongs to the field of Assyriology.
What is the Sumerian language?
Sumerian Symbols. Sumerian is the first known written language. Its script, called cuneiform, meaning “wedge-shaped”. The Cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. Created by the Sumerians in the late 4th millennium BC, cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs. Over time, the pictorial representations ...
What is the most well known Sumerian symbol?
The equal armed cross employed by the Templars shows up extensively in ancient Sumerian carvings. Cuneiform – When people think of the Sumerians, they often think of Cuneiform, which is the style of writing they used. Cuneiform is by far the most well known Sumerian symbol.
Where did the Sumerians come from?
Long before the Bible, There were the Sumerian Tablets. The Sumerians were possibly the earliest society to emerge in the world, in Southern Mesopotamia more than 5000 years ago.
What is the occult symbol of Sumeria?
Pentagram – Perhaps the most well-known occult symbol of all times, the pentagram, also dates back to ancient Sumeria. In Sumerian pictographic writing, it was an ideogram used to describe Merovingian Kings as “lofty ones” or “shining ones”, and was presented in its inverted form.
What language did the Samaritans speak?
Samaritan Hebrew, a descendant of Biblical Hebrew used by Samaritans as a liturgical language. Samaritan Aramaic, a dialect of Aramaic used by the Samaritans in their sacred and scholarly literature.
Where did the Samaritans come from?
The Samaritan alphabet was derived from the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. According to the Bible, the Samaritans came originally from Mesopotamia, then moved to Palestine at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC and adopted the Jewish religion and culture. The Samaritans themselves claim descent from the northern tribes of Israel.
How many Samaritans are there in the world?
The Samaritan alphabet is still used by Samaritans in the city of Nablus and in the Samaritan quarter of Holon. There are currently just over 700 Samaritans.
Notable Features
- Type of writing system: semanto-phonetic- the symbols consist of phonograms, representing spoken syllables, determinatives, which indicate the category a word belonged to and logograms, which repre...
- Writing direction: variable - early texts were written vertically from top to bottom, but by abou…
Sample Texts
- Summary account of silver for the governor written in Sumerian Cuneiform on a clay tablet. From Shuruppak, Iraq, circa 2500 BC. British Museum, London. Image by Gavin.collins - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sumerian_account_of_silver_for_the_govenor.JPG
Links
- Information about the Sumerian language and script: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_language http://www.sumerian.org/ Sumerian dictionaries http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/ http://www.sumerian.org/sumerlex.htm The Sumerian Word of th…
Language Isolates
- Ainu, Basque, Bilua, Burushaski, Candoshi-Shapra, Chitimacha, Eskayan, Haida, Karuk, Kawésqar, Keres, Kuot, Kusunda, Kutenai, Natchez, Nihali, Nivkh, Páez, Purepecha, Sandawe, Seri, Sumerian, Ticuna, Tiwi, Tunica, Urarina, Wardaman, Washo, Yaghan, Yuchi/Euchee, Zuni
Semanto-Phonetic Writing Systems
- Akkadian Cuneiform, Ancient Egyptian (Demotic), Ancient Egyptian (Hieratic), Ancient Egyptian (Hieroglyphs), Chinese, Chữ-nôm, Cuneiform, Japanese, Jurchen, Khitan, Linear B, Luwian, Mayan, Naxi, Sawndip (Old Zhuang), Sui, Sumerian Cuneiform, Tangut (Hsihsia) Other writing systems Page last modified: 01.06.21 [top] Why not share this page: If you like this site and find it useful, …
Overview
Sumerian (𒅴𒂠 Emegir "native tongue") is the language of ancient Sumer. It is believed to be a language isolate and to have been spoken in ancient Mesopotamia (also known as the Fertile Crescent), in the area that is modern-day Iraq.
Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language in the area aroun…
Stages
The history of written Sumerian can be divided into several periods:
• Archaic Sumerian – 31st–26th century BC
• Old or Classical Sumerian – 26th–23rd century BC
• Neo-Sumerian – 23rd–21st century BC
Dialects
The standard variety of Sumerian was Emegir (𒅴𒂠 eme-gir₁₅). A notable variety or sociolect was Emesal (𒅴𒊩 eme-sal), possibly to be interpreted as "fine tongue" or "high-pitched voice" (Rubio 2007, p. 1369). Other terms for dialects or registers were eme-galam "high tongue", eme-si-sa "straight tongue", eme-te-na "oblique[?] tongue", etc.
Emesal is used exclusively by female characters in some literary texts (that may be compared t…
Classification
Sumerian is a language isolate. Ever since decipherment, it has been the subject of much effort to relate it to a wide variety of languages. Because it has a peculiar prestige as one of the most ancient written languages, proposals for linguistic affinity sometimes have a nationalistic background. Such proposals enjoy virtually no support among linguists because of their unverifiability. Sumerian was at one time widely held to be an Indo-European language, but that vi…
Writing system
The Sumerian language is one of the earliest known written languages. The "proto-literate" period of Sumerian writing spans c. 3300 to 3000 BC. In this period, records are purely logographic, with no phonological content. The oldest document of the proto-literate period is the Kish tablet. Falkenstein (1936) lists 939 signs used in the proto-literate period (late Uruk, 34th to 31st centuries).
Historiography
The key to reading logosyllabic cuneiform came from the Behistun inscription, a trilingual cuneiform inscription written in Old Persian, Elamite and Akkadian. (In a similar manner, the key to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphs was the bilingual (Greek and Egyptian with the Egyptian text in two scripts) Rosetta stone and Jean-François Champollion's transcription in 1822.)
Phonology
Assumed phonological or morphological forms will be between slashes //, with plain text used for the standard Assyriological transcription of Sumerian. Most of the following examples are unattested.
Modern knowledge of Sumerian phonology is flawed and incomplete because of the lack of speakers, the transmission through the filter of Akkadian phonology and the difficulties posed by …
Grammar
Ever since its decipherment, research of Sumerian has been made difficult not only by the lack of any native speakers, but also by the relative sparseness of linguistic data, the apparent lack of a closely related language, and the features of the writing system. Typologically, as mentioned above, Sumerian is classified as an agglutinative, split ergative, and subject-object-verb language. It behaves as a nominative–accusative language in the 1st and 2nd persons of the incomplete tense-
Historical Development of The Language
Writing
- Sumerian is written in the cuneiform script. In fact, it is the first language we know to be written using cuneiform and most likely cuneiform was developed for use by this language. The script was originally written using ideograms, symbols which express an idea rather than a word or sound, and thus can technically be understood in any language. A...
dialects?
- There was an interesting system of sign value variation which occurred only during the ED III period. This is commonly referred to as UGN or UD.GAL.NUN as the signs spell out. This manner of writing is characterized by atypical readings for certain signs. For example, the signs UD.GAL.NUN had the anomalous reading of diŋir.en.lil2 which would reference the god (diŋir) En…
The Legacy of Sumerian
- As stated above, the Sumerian language enjoyed a resurrection during the Old Babylonian period as a literary and liturgical language. The scribes in this period considered the language as essential for maintaining the traditions of a very old period, and wanted to recapture an archaic time of magic and legend. After this period ending c. 1595 BCE, the scribal usage of Sumerian d…