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Jul 16, 2014 · The markings allowed officials to know the type and number of tokens in an envelope without opening it. This was the first real step toward writing, for now three-dimensional symbols (tokens) were represented by two-dimensional signs (envelope markings).
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- Before Writing: Accounting with Tokens
- The Birth of Writing: The First Impressed Texts
- Incised Logographic Tablets
- Phonetic Signs
- Beyond Accounting: The Funerary Function
- The Name in Mesopotamia
- Votives Statues
- Conclusion: Classical Cuneiform Script
- For Further Reading
—CA. 7500–3350 BC
Early farmers of the Near East invented a system of small tokens to count and account for the goods they produced. (fig. 2) The token shapes represented various kinds of merchandise prevalent in the farming economy of the time. For example, a cone stood for a small measure of barley, a sphere for a larger measure of barley and a disc for sheep. The number of units of goods was expressed by the number of tokens in a one–to–one correspondence: three small measures of barley were shown by three...
—CA. 3350 —3100 BC
The early city states still used tokens to control the levy of dues. When individuals could not pay, the tokens representing the amount of their debts were kept in a round clay envelope. In order to be able to verify the content of the envelope without breaking it, the tokens were impressed on the surface before enclosing them. A cone left a wedge–shaped mark and a disc a circular one. (fig. 5) Reducing the three–dimensional tokens to two–dimensional signs proved revolutionary: It was the inv...
—CA. 3100–3000 BC
The markings representing the most frequently transacted goods, such as barley, continued to be impressed when a second way of writing was developed to picture the more complex tokens and their markings. The new technique consisted of tracing signs with a pointed reed stylus. The resulting signs are referred to as “incised” signs. (fig. 7) About 3000 BC, a small number of tablets listed together incised signs related to a particular topic such as trees, professions or cities to be used as ref...
—CA. 3000 BC
Around 3000 BC, as a mere bureaucratic formality, personal names began to be entered on economic tablets. The administration of Uruk, the Mesopotamian metropolis, was seemingly no longer satisfied with mere lists of the goods received or disbursed by the temple but started to include information about who gave or whoreceived the listed goods. The Uruk scribes in their wisdom did not create new logograms to transcribe individuals’ names. Instead, they initiated new signs: phonograms – signs st...
—CA. 2700–2500 BC
After five centuries of total commitment to accounting, writing surprisingly changed course in the Mesopotamian city of Ur. This took the form of texts featuring personal names inscribed on splendid metal vases and stone cylinder seals. The dozen artifacts, ranking among the art masterpieces of all times, were excavated in some of the wealthiest burials excavated in the Royal Cemetery. Among them, three gold vessels bearing the name “Meskalamdug,” (fig. 8a and b) were part of the private grav...
Significantly, Mesopotamia had a particular understanding of names. These people believed that things came into existence by giving them a name. Conversely something without a name could not exist. For instance, they described the world before the creation in these words “… when above, the heavens were not named, below, the earth was not given a na...
2500–2300 BC
The funerary texts from Ur inscribed with personal names opened a new avenue for writing. They were followed by a variety of votive objects which further advanced its evolution. Among these artifacts, small alabaster inscribed statues, 10–30 cm high, were recovered in the ruins of temples in Near Eastern sites such as Nippur or Mari. Many of these are the figures of a standing male worshipper with his hands joined or holding a libation cup. (fig. 12) The figures wear the typical kaunakes, or...
CA. 2000 BC.
Tokens were entirely devoted to accounting for 5000 years. The same was true for the impressed and incised tablets for another 500 years. It took the specter of death and nothingness to shift writing from economic lists and write names on funerary furniture. It was the desire to speak to the gods that pushed writing to reproduce speech. From there on, it took less than five centuries for the Mesopotamian cuneiform script to reach its classical period, ca. 2000BC. The Ur texts and the statues...
Diane Katz, “Death they Dispensed to Mankind —The Funerary World of Ancient Mesopotamia,” Historiaevol. 2, 2005, p. 55–90. Jack N. Lawson, The Concept of Fate in Ancient Mesopotamia of the First Millennium, Towards an understanding of Shimtu, Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1994. Mario Liverani, The Ancient Near East, History, Society and Economy, ...
Jan 24, 2007 · Flipboard. Email. The Tokens spent much of the '60s trying to move away from "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," and doo-wop in general. The five-piece experimented unsuccessfully with folk, and then...
The proto-cuneiform script was a system of proto-writing that emerged in Mesopotamia, eventually developing into the early cuneiform script used in the region's Early Dynastic I period. It arose from the token-based system that had already been in use across the region in preceding millennia.
